Above the East China Sea: A Novel (48 page)

I lean over the riders crammed up against me in the aisle of the crowded bus, and crane to get a view of the place where the sky and the ocean meet. The juncture flutters with a shimmery coral and crimson light as the sun dips into it. The sunset tints the faces of the Okinawans around me as rosy as if we’re staring into a fire. All but the last wobbly slice of sun has disappeared into the East China Sea, and the evening is growing dark when the bus hisses to a stop next to dozens of others. I join the crush of excited passengers being disgorged.

Sodden heat still rises from the pavement, but a sea breeze cools the air. Overhead, the monorail shoots around a curve in the lighted track. Behind me, in the distance, a freighter docked in the Naha port is illuminated bright as a fairy castle. The reflections from its lights make blurry columns of aqua and gold in the water. Keeping the freighter at my back and the monorail tracks on my left, I join the throngs surging onto Kokusai-dōri toward the center of the city.

The street has been shut off to traffic, and its wide sidewalks are packed with spectators. I make my way up the broad avenue, dodging around the policemen shoving the crowds back onto the sidewalk. In the dark, nothing about the street looks familiar, until I spot the giant cat with the dead black eyes hanging from the second story of the souvenir shop, waving in his creepy animatronic way. Unfortunately, I can’t recall whether the cat was located before or after Heiwa-dōri.

A policeman puts his white-gloved hands on me and pushes like I’m a rider on a Tokyo subway. The crowd is packed so tightly that I can’t move. Just as I realize that I’m trapped far from the meeting place, a sound like thunder starts from miles down the street. I feel it low in my gut before I can even identify it as drumming. The distant booming announces that I’m running out of time: The parade has started, the dead are being driven away.

FORTY-NINE

A rumbling explosion startles Hatsuko and she clutches onto Mitsue as her heart flaps within her chest like a trapped bird. She waits for the sky to blaze again with the fires of war and wonders how they will find their way out of this churning mass, so that they can flee to the safety of the caves.

“Auntie,” Hideo asks, bending down to look at Hatsuko, “why are you trembling? It is only the drummers. Mitsue, what is wrong with her? Make her close her mouth. People are staring.”

“Let them stare,” Mitsue snaps. “She needs to rest. We have to get Hatsuko to a quiet spot.”

Hatsuko watches the strange man’s face contort into speech, but his words are lost in the thunder of the detonations. The other refugees crush in closer. She can feel their fear as the explosion of the Americans’ bombs comes closer.

We must head south. We will be safe in the south.

“Tamiko!” She tries to call her little sister’s name, but the word is lost between her brain and her mouth. She must find her little sister. This time she won’t let her treacherous heart mislead her. This time they won’t be separated. This time they will stay together until they are both safe in their family’s tomb.

FIFTY

I push hard against the crowd and they push back even harder. The first group of dancers appears in the street. They wear toenail polish–pink kimonos and look like lines of roses dancing beneath the streetlights. The policemen lock arms and force us farther back.

A huge chrysanthemum firework explodes overhead. Its blazing petals light up the street for blocks in either direction, and I catch a glimpse of a green arch and two white doves fluttering up to heaven.

I know which way to go now but am imprisoned by the crowd. I have to get to the green arch so Jake will know I’m there. That I made it. That I’m not just another kid from the base and won’t simply vanish one day, never to be seen or thought of again. But I am trapped; I’ll never connect with Jake. With anyone. Not even Codie.

A drunk guy in front of me stumbles and falls back, crushing the lily pin on my blouse into my chest until it jabs me hard. I lean in with all my body weight to shove the jerk off me, but he doesn’t budge. After a moment’s debate, I do what Codie would have done. I take the brooch off and stick the pin in the guy’s fat neck. Slapping at the stab like a wasp has bitten him, he whirls around and I slip through. Polite time is over. Whatever it takes, I am going to get to Peace Street in time to meet Jake.

FIFTY-ONE

The mob of refugees, driven mad by fear, is a tall, thick forest locking Hatsuko in place. She is lost. Worse, her little sister is lost. The booms, terrifying and inescapable, come closer. Then flares light up the sky, exposing their positions. They must escape. Hatsuko, overcome by weariness after already marching so long to come this far, can’t catch her breath. Sheets of sweat wash down her face even as waves of nausea heave upward. She fears that she will vomit on the refugees around her and fights the urge with every bit of strength she has left. Though she tries to struggle on, her legs have turned rubbery and weak beneath her. She gasps, but the air has become too thick to pull into her lungs. She opens her mouth to scream out her sister’s name, but no sound emerges.

Instead, all the frantic people melt away, the tall buildings disappear,
the bombing stops, a voluptuous silence encloses Hatsuko, and Tamiko’s dear face appears. She is, of course, smiling. And she is dancing. Little Guppy makes her crane-and-pine hand gesture droop comically as she turns her hands into two geese pecking each other. Tamiko doesn’t care about being perfect. She cares about making her big sister laugh.

Hatsuko smiles and Tamiko’s laughter in return is the only sound in her head. She doesn’t hear Mitsue yelling to Hideo. She doesn’t hear Hideo, video camera pressed to his eye, order his wife to see what is wrong
now
with the old ladies, that the girls will be passing them in the next group. He has to be ready with the camera. Hatsuko doesn’t hear a child scream that an old lady has fallen. There is no sound at all when, in the darkness above Hatsuko, a halo of cell phones lights up to summon an ambulance.

FIFTY-TWO

I use the pin a few more times, though I confine the stabs only to the biggest, most immobile of doofuses. I’m able to take out a few others as they stretch up on tiptoe for a better view simply by pressing my kneecaps against the backs of their overstraightened legs. When they stumble, off balance, I break through the opening they leave. Which is what I’ve just done when, across the street, in a break in the crowd, I catch a glimpse of a girl I recognize. I’m so certain, not just that I know her, but that she is a dear friend that my hand is up, ready to wave, when I realize that who I think she is, is the girl from the portrait in the museum. I think she is Tamiko Kokuba.