Above the East China Sea: A Novel (20 page)

Anmā! Anmā!
Who is that? The warrior on the horse.

He is a palace guard who died defending our last great king, Shō Tai. And the beautiful woman washing her long hair is his third wife. I don’t know who the pale Amerikā crying in the corner is.

Can they see us?

No, they aren’t
kami
either. They are the displaced, not
kami,
not living, waiting here like us.

For the girl who came to the cave?

Perhaps.

But she is ours. Didn’t the
kami
send her to us?

No more questions. If I answer all of them, there won’t be time to tell you the story. You do want to be with our clan when you enter into the other realm, don’t you?

Yes.

All right then. Where was I?

You were sad because Little Mouse didn’t wave good-bye to you, but then the sun came up and
—

Yes, yes, the sun came up and I was on the road to Shuri to be with my sister.

Because the Imperial Army had seized control of the railroad, I had to walk all day to reach Naha. Though we had heard that the city had been bombed a year ago, all the reports had downplayed the damage, and I was not prepared for the devastation. Where once there had been trolley lines and fine restaurants, exclusive hotels and tree-lined boulevards, only piles of jagged cement and burned timbers remained. I made my way out of the ravaged city to the ancient capital of Shuri, home of the Okinawan kings that my father’s family had once served as hereditary samurai. Fortunately, Shuri and its castle were far enough from Naha that they remained untouched. The royal palace sat atop a hill like a potentate elevated above the subjects who knelt at his feet. I comforted myself with the knowledge that the Imperial Japanese Army had located their headquarters in our capital and had dispatched two of their finest generals, Ushijima and Chō, to command it.

I went straight to Himeyuri High School to find Hatsuko and discovered that the Imperial Army had claimed most of the school. I told the Japanese guard at the gate that I’d come to see my sister. He said only soldiers and Princess Lily girls could be admitted, and that all students were off taking nursing classes at headquarters. I asked where headquarters was. The guard gave me a fierce look and demanded, “Are you a spy?” He raised his rifle until the bayonet pointed straight at my heart. “You speak Japanese like a spy.”

I thought of all the Okinawans who had been whipped, imprisoned, or beheaded by suspicious soldiers for speaking our dialect, and, my heart hammering in my chest, I turned and fled into the crowd. I ran for several blocks, expecting at any moment to be shot in the back.

When I was safely out of range, I took refuge in an alley and caught
my breath. Huge army trucks rumbled past. The asphalt streets were already cracked and rutted from their weight. Japanese soldiers in khaki were everywhere. A rickshaw passed carrying a stern army officer with the high black collar of his olive green tunic buttoned tight beneath his chin. His black leather boots came all the way up to the knees of his jodhpurs. The officer had removed his sword from its scabbard and thrust it between his feet. The barefoot driver wore a long vest that slapped at his pumping legs, and a conical straw hat that bounced on his head as he ran.

Other high-ranking officers with fierce scowls rode past enthroned in the sidecars of motorcycles. In spite of my fright, I marveled at all the evidence that my little island had been transformed into the mightiest fortress in all the Pacific. Still, with no official papers, or letter of acceptance into Himeyuri, I was worried about being taken again for a spy. So, as night descended, I climbed the wide stone stairway that led out of Shuri to the one place where I felt secure: the great castle at the top. Even when the Japanese forbade teaching the history of the Ryukyu Islands, Mother had made sure that her children knew that Shuri Castle was the heart of our country. Besides being the capital, where our kings had once ruled, the castle held the long history of the Ryukyu Islands, the chronology of all the kings, chronicles of battles fought, and, most important,
Anmā
always emphasized, all the property records throughout the islands. She was proud that, while Shuri Castle was not quite as old as the Roman Coliseum, our ancestors had created this structure centuries before the Cathedral at Notre Dame was even started.

Though I was upset at not finding Hatsuko, and by having a bayonet pointed at me, a sense of ease suffused me when I reached the forty-foot-high wall that encircled the royal palace and its grounds. The wall had stood for five centuries. Even the imperialist aggressor Commodore Perry, whom our king had insulted so grievously, had not attempted a serious invasion. I knew then that what we Okinawans always said was true: “As long as Shuri holds, our kingdom will hold.” I passed beneath the grand gate inscribed with the Chinese characters meaning “Land of Peace” and entered the safety of the enchanted world within.

The castle painted in gold and vermilion could have been plucked
from a fairy tale. It was just as I remembered it from my childhood visits with Mother. The tips of the castle’s vast tiled roof swept up at the edges like the horns of a water buffalo. Carved stone dragon heads spouted cool water from underground springs. Gardens and shaded forest walks sprawled out beyond the vast courtyard, suffusing the air with the tender scent of lilies.

Out of sight of the castle keepers who were shutting the gates for the night, I slipped unnoticed into the woods, where I imagined generations of kings and queens strolling down the same cobbled path I followed. It crossed over the high arch of a bridge above a pond where fat red and gold koi fish from Japan undulated through the water. The path ended at the base of an ancient banyan tree so large a thousand men could have cooled in its shade. I spread my
furoshiki
wrapping cloth on the ground beneath its latticework of aerial roots and sat down to rest. Overcome by exhaustion, I dropped immediately into a deep sleep filled with dreams of feudal princes and princesses.

Early the next morning, I awoke to the sounds of a squad of Japanese soldiers executing bayonet drills on the main square in front of the castle. I crept through the garden that hid me until the soldiers were in sight. They wore sleeveless T-shirts, bands of white were tied around their foreheads, and olive green leg wrappings held the bottoms of their pants tight. They lunged in formation, bellowing out one loud grunt as they thrust into the guts of invisible enemies.

My empty stomach churned in response. At the far end of the courtyard, a tea vendor was pushing his two-wheeled cart among the patriotic spectators who had gathered to watch and cheer the valiant warriors. Still hidden by the dense foliage, I dug a bill from the mouth of the snake of money Mother had tied around my waist, replaced the rest, and then stepped out to make my way through the crowd. I purchased a millet cake and a cup of tea, knowing that Mother wouldn’t object to the expenditure; I would never be able to find and safeguard Hatsuko if I starved to death before reaching her.

I stuffed the delicious cake sweetened with sugarcane juice into my mouth. At my feet, pigeons gathered to peck at a shower of crumbs thrown by one of the spectators. Cooing, they approached the crumbs with their jerky, deliberate gait, and then nibbled away at the windfall until it was gone. After a moment, another shower of crumbs fell.
When I saw the source of this generosity one word flashed across my mind:
juri.
I knew that the woman tossing crumbs to the birds was a prostitute by the sheerness of her
tonpyan
kimono, by the careful shaping of her black eyebrows, by the way her thick black hair was held in a bun atop her head by a long silver pin that flashed in the morning sun. Decent women wore their buns offset to the side so that the tops of their heads were free to carry a basket of potatoes or a piglet tied at the ankles. Her rouged cheeks were pink as a doll baby’s, and her face was pale and velvety with powder. She’d even stained the tips of her nails a delicate coral by binding
tinsagu
petals to them overnight, something decent girls were forbidden from doing. But mostly I knew she was a
juri
by the shameless way she wore the sash of her boldly patterned kimono high on her waist to make herself look taller, more slender, and more youthful than the virtuous women like my mother and my aunts, who tied their sashes low on their hips.

“They’re hungry today, aren’t they?” the
juri
asked me.

I glanced away, embarrassed that she’d caught me gaping at her.

“Oh, look at The General bullying all the others into letting him take more than his share.” She pointed to a big pigeon with his chest puffed out and laughed a laugh of such silken refinement that I had to stare at her. She had lovely teeth: white, without the slightest hint of decay from sucking sugar. Watching the fat pigeon she called The General strutting about, chasing the other pigeons away, I had to laugh as well.

“What are you doing in Shuri?” the
juri
asked.

“I’m going to meet my sister at Himeyuri High School.”

“Oh a Princess Lily girl,” she said. “She must be very smart. Are you a student there as well?”

I nodded, wanting her to think that I, too, was very smart.

“So you must be on your way then to join the others at the Japanese high command headquarters.”

“Yes.” Though I still didn’t know where this high command headquarters was, I was pleased that I had learned where Hatsuko was without revealing that I wasn’t actually a Princess Lily girl.

With no warning, the
juri
reached out, took my chin in her fragrantly powdered hand, and tilted it from side to side, studying my face as if I were a horse she was considering buying. She had a forward manner that I assumed must be due to her profession.

All trace of her former gay demeanor now vanished, she asked intently, “You are a true
Uchinānchu,
aren’t you?”

It was pointless to deny; besides the obvious fact that we were speaking in
Uchināguchi,
no one had a more Okinawan face than I.

“You come to Shuri because you love our history, don’t you?”

I didn’t correct her. I thought that our history was charming in a backward way, but the modern, exciting future we’d have once Okinawa had proved her loyalty to the empire, that was really what I loved.

“You know that we have not always been impoverished farmers. You know that in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries we were traders welcomed in China, Korea, Java, and the South Sea Islands. That Japan, though she invaded our islands and extorted heavy taxes and tributes, was but one of our many trading partners. And not even a favored one.”

I said nothing; my mother and her sisters were always making treasonous statements just like these. Besides, I needed the
juri
to show me the way to headquarters.

“Yet you are also educated.” She stared into my face for so long that I brushed at my nose, fearing that something unpleasant might be protruding.

“Yes, I think you just might be smart enough and Okinawan enough to survive what is coming. I won’t. Most of us won’t.”

It annoyed me to hear her speaking the same backward, traitorous thoughts as my mother, and I wanted to leave. But she still gripped my chin as she went on. “You with your true Okinawan eyes and heart and soul, remember all that you will see. Remember and then tell the tale. Tell the truth of what happens.” With that, she released my chin and set off at a furious pace. When I didn’t follow, she glanced back and snapped, “Come along.”

I was torn between prudence and curiosity. As it always did with me, though, curiosity won out and I scurried after her. A cluster of silk cherry blossoms dangled like a cute pink tail from the long silver pin stabbed into her high bun. I followed that bobbing pink tail down the steep stairway back to Shuri below. Even at this early hour, the town was bustling. Vendors yelled out that their
gōyā
melons were fresh or their
suzuki
fish had been caught that very morning. Delivery girls balanced pots of tea and baskets of
andāgii
still warm from the fryer atop
their heads. At the base of the stairs, we passed beneath a high
torii
just like the ones in Japan and onto a broad avenue that was lined on both sides by stone lanterns as tall as a man. At a Buddhist temple next to the avenue, a priest sprinkled water on the steps to keep down the dust.

A mother and her daughter emerged from the temple. The girl, probably only a year or two younger than me, ran ahead of her mother. When the mother saw her nearing the
juri
she called out sharply, “Watch where you are going! Remember what I told you!”

The girl stopped, stared up at the
juri,
and froze in horrified recognition. The mother rushed up and yanked her stunned daughter away.

Though the
juri
acted as if she hadn’t noticed the insult, a red welt appeared on the pale skin of her neck, as crimson as the mark of a lash. With her head held high, we continued on. When she spoke, her voice was calm and deliberate, and since she didn’t so much as glance my way, it almost seemed as if she were speaking more to herself than to me. “No one knows what fate has in store for her. This very day, for example, a
habu
viper hiding and waiting for just such an opportunity might strike at that mother’s ankle as she walks to the gate of her fine home. And in spite of the desperate prayers her daughter offers for her beloved mother, the heart of her hearts, her protector and comfort, the mother will die that night. Then, in what he says is his grief, but all know to be his selfish cupidity, the father will marry his young and stupid mistress and bring her and her stupid family and all their debts into their house. The father will drink even more as the debt collectors’ demands grow ever more impossible. When everything has been sold, except for all the mistress’s fine goods and expensive presents, which she has hidden away, the father, who must save his honor at all costs, will sell his daughter, and all his shame will be transferred to her.