Above the East China Sea: A Novel (41 page)

“But we will be shot as deserters.”

“Hatsuko, the army has deserted us. We have no choice. Everyone here will either surrender or die.”

“Death before dishonor.”

I wanted to slap her when she said that, but didn’t. We weren’t having a sisters’ spat. There was no longer any winning or losing. There was only living or dying, and I was determined that we would live. “Hatsuko, there is food in our family tomb.
Anmā
put it there for us. Pork miso. Dried sweet potatoes. Black sugar. And the springs? Remember the springs in the woods behind our house? There will be clean, fresh water. We can drink. Bathe. We’re not far, Hatsuko. We can be back in our village in two nights’ marching.”

“Perhaps Mother and Father will be waiting for us, safe in the tomb.”

“It’s possible.” If anyone could outwit the Japanese and American armies, it was my resourceful mother. How, I wondered, had such a simple countrywoman been able to predict all that would happen? Thinking it would help convince Hatsuko, I added, “You know what Mother always says: ‘Life is the treasure.’ ”

Instead of convincing her, however,
Anmā
’s mantra must have reminded Hatsuko of the warrior’s code of death before dishonor that Nakamura lived by, and she insisted, “No. I can’t. I must find Nakamura.”

Again I fought the impulse to slap my sister. I knew that if I did, though, it would only make her more stubborn. Instead, speaking in the flowery way she did with Nakamura, I lured her with this promise: “Nakamura is the reason we must go. Like all the others, he, too, is starving. We must go and fetch food for him. Imagine his delight when you present the crock of
Anmā
’s delicious pork miso to him.”

In her eyes, I saw the scene she imagined playing out. Nakamura would be on his deathbed, his features even more refined and ennobled by all he’d endured. Hatsuko would cushion his body with hers, helping him to sit up. The first few bites she would feed to him herself. She would snatch him back from the White Dragon of Death. Dazzled by gratitude, he would fix his eyes on hers and their love would be reborn.

“Yes, all right,” she agreed.

The way to our village was littered with corpses bloated to two and three times their size. We had covered only a few kilometers when the sight and smell of rotting flesh combined with hunger and thirst made Hatsuko’s pace wobbly and uncertain. Unless I found food and water, her energy would continue to dwindle, until she joined the poor souls who’d already given up their lives. That fear drove me to approach the body of a Japanese soldier, lying facedown in a dry ditch. Flies, their blue bellies fat, buzzed around him. I tried to shoo them away, but they wouldn’t leave. In the soldier’s rucksack I found three hard candies and a tin of food. I was forced to shove his body aside to retrieve the canteen he’d fallen on. His rifle had been smashed by falling rocks, but I was able to remove the bayonet, and I took that with me.

I sucked one of the hard candies, and every sight and sound and smell except for the voluptuous sweetness of barley sugar melting in my mouth faded away. I retraced my path back to Hatsuko, gave her the two candies I had left, and we each took sips from the canteen. The tin, which I opened with the blade of the bayonet, contained squid in oil. Hatsuko and I savored every tentacle of the squid and every drop of its dark oil. The water, candy, and squid gave us the energy to toil on for a few more kilometers before the sun started to rise. Even if it meant stealing from the dead, my sister and I were going home.

FORTY

It is dark outside and a misty drizzle is falling when I get back to the car. In the pink light cast by the SoapLand sign, I see that Jake is asleep. His head rests to one side, nestled against his shoulder. He looks blurry through the wet windshield. All the shops on the street have closed for the night, their shutters lowered. I try to figure out what to tell him, but I haven’t even absorbed it all myself. As soon as I open the door, he wakes.

“Hey, how’d it go? You were gone a long time.”

“Yeah, he wanted to tell me the story of his life.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“Did you get what you needed?”

I show him the list I copied.

“That should work. You okay?”

“It was intense.”

“You want to talk about it?”

“I feel like I’ve already dragged you into more than you bargained for.”

“You didn’t drag me; the
kami
did. Want to try the best yakitori on the island?”

“I’m not really hungry.”

“Then just come with me, because I’m starved. My cousin and her husband have this unbelievable
yatai
over near the Sunabe Seawall.”

His cousin’s
yatai,
a cross between a noodle cart and a tapas bar, glows as brightly as the red paper lanterns hanging at either end of the seating area, where half a dozen stools are crowded around the counter. As we approach, the owners, a beaming thirtyish couple, greet Jake like a long-lost son. “Jay-koo! Jay-koo!
Hai-sai! Hai-sai!
”

The husband, sautéing mounds of bean sprouts and pork on a griddle that stretches the length of the counter, wears a short white kimono dotted with navy-blue fans over jeans, and sports a soul patch beneath his lower lip. His wife, busy chopping up piles of cabbage and scallions, greets us in happy, fluting Japanese. The heat from the griddle makes
her face flush a pretty pink beneath thick bangs and a white kerchief that hides the rest of her hair.

Jake ducks his head in a few swift bows, returning the greetings as he exchanges a volley of Japanese with the couple, who grin and laugh at his every comment. My name, pronounced
Loozoo,
pops out, and they both rain friendly nods and bows my way.

“Luz, I’d like you to meet my cousin Kana.” The wife wipes her hand on her apron and extends it over the griddle for me to shake. “And her husband, Matsukichi.”

The
yatai
with its luminous openness and welcoming ambience is the perfect antidote to SoapLand’s grubby sordidness. All I want to do at this moment is forget everything Vaughn told me.

Kana gestures for us to sit, sit. From a poster advertising Boss Coffee, Tommy Lee Jones’s pitted, Easter Island face scowls down at us. He does look like a boss. Certainly no one you’d want to cross. A quilt of business cards, brown as a flurry of moths, is tacked up overhead, covering the ceiling of the
yatai.

Jake explains, “Matsukichi used to work in Tokyo in equity derivatives.”

Matsukichi looks up from the griddle and calls out, “Team lead!”

“And Kana taught Ryukyuan history at Sofia University. But when they had children, they both wanted to come back and raise them as true Okinawans.”

“Uchinānchu! Ichiban!”
Matsukichi calls out, having pieced together that we are talking about his return to Okinawa. “Tokyo no
yasashii.
” He waggles his fist, thumb, and little finger out, in the “Hang loose, brah,” shaka gesture, and I get that he returned because Tokyo is not as laid-back as his home island.

Matsukichi slides a feast onto the counter in front of us: skewers of yakitori, the grilled meat glistening with tangy sauce; pinwheels of thinly sliced omelette; and bowls of soba topped with pork and vegetables. I recognize in a distant, abstract way that it’s delicious, but the SoapLand shocks have tightened my stomach into a hard ball that repels food. Though I try to push the thoughts away, my heart clenches as I imagine the unthinkable hardships that my sweet grandmother endured. Even as images of all she suffered begin to appear in my mind, they are lulled away by an insistent cooing,
“Shi, shi, shi,”
and, knowing it is what
Anmā
wants, I am able to eat.

All the happy bantering among Jake, his cousin, and her husband stops dead when a group of Japanese tourists, half a dozen guys in their midtwenties loud and boisterous as drunk frat boys, ducks in under the canvas curtains. They fall silent the instant they see Jake and me. Before they can back out at the sight of a non-Japanese, though, Jake jumps up and waves the newcomers in with a burst of high-volume Japanese.

“Make room for the paying customers,” Jake tells me as we quickly vacate our seats, whisking away our trash as we go. Jake’s cousin scoops some drinks out of a cooler, pops them into a bag, along with two packaged servings of the deep purple sweet potato cakes I’d seen earlier. With bows all around, we leave Kana and Matsukichi to their customers. Even though only a canvas curtain separates us from the globe of friendliness and warmth, the
yatai
seems a world away the instant we step outside and stroll over to the seawall. On the inland side, the seawall is covered with dazzling graffiti of dancing dragons and singing flowers, big-eyed children and lonesome wizards. The ocean side is reinforced with interlocking clusters of cement jacks the size of picnic tables, meant to break the power of typhoon waves.

“Whenever you feel like it,” Jake says, and I know he means whenever I feel like talking about Vaughn. “Or not,” he adds, and takes my hand. He curls his arm up until my palm rests on his chest and I can feel his heart beat against it. The moon is even fuller than it was last night, and the air is heavy with the smell and feel of the sea. The darkness is a comfort.

During the day surfers, snorkelers, and divers own the Sunabe Seawall. Church youth groups play volleyball on the narrow beach, and girls lie on bright towels to tan and watch their boyfriends surf. At night, however, the seawall is owned by lonely guys tracking the lights of distant freighters, by solitary drinkers, by couples having intense discussions that end with each one stalking off in opposite directions, and by cats. Yowling, feral cats.

Jake tosses pebbles at a screeching pack until they saunter away, tails twitching lazily, as if they wouldn’t have deigned to eat our food even if we’d offered. Out in the water, patches of eerie blue light wobble, marking the spots where night divers are discovering luminescent squid, sleeping manta rays, and clouds of dancing shrimp. Off in the distance,
Naha shimmers through the misty haze like a fairy castle. The wall where we sit is still warm from the day’s sun.

Jake rustles around in the bag his cousin gave us and hands me a drink. I can just barely make out the name on the can in the red light cast by the lanterns hung outside the
yatai.
“ ‘Pocari Sweat.’ ” I pop the tab and take a swig. “Tastes like Gatorade with extra sugar.”

“Hey, my cousin could have given us Pepsi Ice Cucumber.”

“You’re making that up.”

“It’s as real as Bilk, the new beer milk.”

“Beer made out of milk?”

“Very popular. And don’t miss the hot new curry soda. Or the soda that tastes like yogurt.”

“Your people are sick, Jake.”

Jake laughs, finishes his drink, accordions the can into an aluminum puck between his hands, overarms it toward the trash; the can rattles in, and he turns to me. “Were we going to talk?”

“I need to do one thing first.”

He looks over, waits for me to tell him what that thing is, and I kiss him.

“Wow. Yeah. Okay. Good first thing to do.” He puts his hand behind my neck and pulls me to him. It is velvety when we kiss, more voluptuous than Oxy. All the chattering in my head stops, and the jagged edges melt away. I want to keep kissing him forever. To feed on him like a vampire, because at this moment, for the first time in longer than I can remember, I’m not thinking about Codie, or my grandmother, or my mom; I feel all right. I feel like what I think normal is.

I put my arms around his neck. He is solid within my embrace. I want him to hold me and he does. It seems like I’ve been traveling a very long time to get to this moment. Like Jake was the destination I’ve been trying to reach without realizing it. I’m sad to discover that kissing him makes me feel as though I belong somewhere, because the one place I can’t belong is with him. I decide that I’m not going to ruin this moment by telling him about my grandmother or Codie or the girl in the cave. I’m going to be normal. I’m going to eat better, get more sleep, exercise. He’s going to go back to Christy, but I’m going to be fine. As long as I stop thinking about all this crazy stuff.