Above the East China Sea: A Novel (53 page)

Jake and I are both happy to be overlooked in the chaos as a room is readied for Hatsuko who, exhausted by speaking and overcome by the medication she’s been given, sleeps on one side of me while Jake sits on the other. I stare into his eyes, searching for half-remembered conditions like “fixed gaze” and “pupils of unequal size.”

As I study it, Jake’s face goes slack; his eyes unfocus and roll wildly. “Who are you?” he asks. “Where am I? What is this place? Is it snack time? When’s recess?”

“Jake? What is it? What’s wrong?” I am about to call out for help when he laughs. I slug his biceps. “You jerk.”

“Luz, seriously, I’m fine. Or will be as soon as they let us out of here.”

“You’re like a military kid.”

“How’s that?”

“Can’t stand to be fussed over. The center of attention.”

“Is that a military kid thing?”

“In my family it is.”

Hatsuko mutters in her sleep, and Jake and I tense as we wait for her breathing to fall back into a regular rhythm. We listen to the steady beat of the monitor, until we’re certain that, for the moment, Hatsuko is all right. Then, whispering as if she can hear me, I tell Jake who she is and what I learned at the museum and in Madadayo.

“The girl in the cave?”

“No, her sister.” I tell him about the trip to Madadayo. About the portraits in the museum. I point to the lily brooch. “That’s her sister’s pin. She recognized it. Isn’t that amazing? Isn’t the whole thing amazing?”

Jake shrugs. “Kind of amazing. Kind of not.”

“How can it not be amazing?”

“First of all, Okinawa is tiny. Once we knew the Princess Lily part, we were, at most, another day away from finding her. Second of all, the
kami
wanted you to find her.”

“Did she say that? Hatsuko? When she was talking to me?”

“I couldn’t make out a lot of what she was saying. She was mostly muttering, and when she did speak up, it was in Okinawan. I’ve been trying to learn
Uchināguchi,
but not even us
Uchinānchu
speak it much anymore. It sure seemed like she expected you to understand, though.”

I glance up at Jake and lose track of what I was about to say. All I can manage to focus on is how much I like his face. I like it way,
way
too much. Finally I say, “You saved my life.”

“Not really. That ambulance was barely crawling along. And I fell more than it hit me.”

“No, you did. You saved my life.” When I say it the second time, we both know that I don’t mean the ambulance or the shove. Or not just them.

Jake doesn’t answer, just takes my hand, brushes off the bits of road grit still clinging there, brings it to his lips, and kisses every one of my fingernails. Then, his tone serious, he says, “Luz, I need to tell you something.”

The elephant in the room is finally going to be named, and that name will be Christy. Every molecule in my body wants to jump up, to leave, to stop whatever blow-off speech Jake has queued up. Instead, I blurt out, “No worries. It’s not a problem. We had fun. Whatever.”

“God, Luz, just let me talk, okay?” The sounds around us—a couple of drunks fighting in the waiting area, the descending wail of an ambulance as it pulls up outside, the symphony of beeps—all rise in volume to fill the silence that I desperately don’t want to end. Jake keeps holding my hand, molding it between his. His skin color, that apple-jelly gold, is a tanner version of my own. On him I see how exquisite it is. He doesn’t want to say what he has to say any more than I want to hear it, and it’s a long time before he starts again. “Christy and I have been together a long time—”

The jangle of the curtain being whipped back along its metal track stops Jake. The instant I see who it is, I jump to my feet and bow. Then, while trying to figure out why she is grinning like someone walking
into her own surprise party, I greet the beautiful old woman from Madadayo: “
Hai-sai,
Mitsue-san.”

SIXTY

Mitsue laughs, delighted to see the strange American who had come to Madadayo here in the hospital caring for her cousin. How clever the
kami
are to use a
hāfu
to do their work! she thinks. And to even provide an interpreter in the form of a handsome Okinawan boy. Mitsue tells him that she has come to bring Hatsuko home.

“No, she can’t be moved,” the boy responds in Japanese softened by his
Uchinānchu
accent.

“Yes, she can. We will use the wheelchair you’re sitting in. You don’t seem to need it.”

“I don’t, but she has to stay here. They’re trying to find a room for her right now.”

“Her room is waiting for her back in her home in Madadayo. That is where she wants to be. It was all decided in advance.” With that, Mitsue holds up a document written in Hatsuko’s elegant calligraphy, and witnessed, registered, and sealed by all the proper authorities.

The
hāfu
girl asks what’s happening and the boy explains. “She wants to take her home.”

“Is that a good idea?”

“No, they’re working to get her admitted right now.”

The boy tells Mitsue this, and she asks, “Why? Hatsuko is dying. If she stays here, the doctors will attach her to machines that will force her worn-out body to do what it should no longer be forced to do. And for what? To make her last days a misery? Worst of all, if she remains here, she will be cremated as the law requires now, and then my cousin will be denied what she wants most: a proper Okinawan funeral.”

The boy has no answer.

“That is why she wrote this.” Mitsue holds up the document that
Hatsuko had gone over so many times with her. “All her instructions are very clear. Now up! Get up!”

The boy, startled by how fierce the gentle old woman has become, stands, and pushes the wheelchair to her. Mitsue leans over Hatsuko and whispers in her old friend’s ear, “It’s time, dear cousin.”

Hatsuko’s eyes flutter open.

“She’s ready,” Mitsue tells the boy, who has come to understand the part he must play. He gathers Hatsuko’s whisper of a body in his arms and settles her into the wheelchair with a delicacy that causes the
hāfu
girl’s eyes to go soft with longing.

As he pushes the chair out through the waiting area, Mitsue tells the boy, “If you’re still here when an angry man with a nervous wife arrives, tell him that his great-aunt has been taken home. You might also mention that she has removed him as the executor of her estate and has deeded all her property directly to the Okinawan Heritage Society.”

“I think we’re leaving now too.”

“That’s just as well. He’s quite unpleasant and bound to become more so.”

Though the boy begs her to allow him to run and fetch his car to drive them home, Mitsue insists upon taking a cab. The boy selects a comfortable taxi for them and helps tuck Hatsuko into the backseat, where she can lie down with her head in Mitsue’s lap, and the two women set off for Madadayo, for home.

SIXTY-ONE

Jake and I drive a long time without saying anything, and the smells of Okinawa at night fill the car with their own conversation. It is one I’ve never heard correctly before. Instead of sickly sweet, the night simply smells green, humid and blossoming and full of life re-creating itself.

The red glow from Kadena’s twenty-four thousand feet of runways comes into view. It feels like a fire burning in the hearth, welcoming me home. Runway lights are home. My home. The home I grew up with. Just like they were home for my mother. What she grew up with. They’re what we were given, and, no matter how many times we move, how the bases and states and countries switch around, runway lights will always be what feels like home to us.

I want the coming-home feeling to go on. I don’t want it wrecked by what Jake has to tell me. I’m exhausted and I know that’s why my eyes fill when I think about how everything will end tomorrow. Tomorrow Christy comes back. Tomorrow my mom comes back. My mission has been accomplished. I try to come up with another reason for sticking around.

As we approach the gate, Jake says, “There was one thing Hatsuko kept saying.”

“There was?”

“Yeah, she kept repeating it over while she stared really hard at you. I guess I caught it because it’s something my mom says all the time.
Nuchi du takara.
”

“Nuchi du takara,”
I repeat, as if the strange words will straighten themselves out if I put them in my mouth.

“Life is the treasure.”

“ ‘Life is the treasure.’ That’s what she was saying to me?”

“Yeah, really emphatically too.”

“Nuchi du takara,”
I say, remembering the words then and how Hatsuko had spoken them more as a command than as a statement.

“That saying pulled Okinawans through some tough times. Some
really
tough times.” Jake says in a way that makes me know he’s talking about my tough times and about me making it through. He pulls into our carport, kills the engine, starts off, “Luz—”

I stop him. “Jake, don’t, okay? I understand. You’re with Christy. You were with her when I met you. Can we just leave it like this?”

“Luz—”

“No, Jake, I have to live here.” The instant I say it, “have to live,” I know it’s true. “I have to be a real part of this”—I stumble over the word that is as right as it is corny—“community. I can’t start off screwing everything up. Whatever it was, it’s over.”

Before he can answer, I’m out of the car. I don’t look back, don’t even hesitate until I’m inside the apartment. I lock the door behind me and go to the back patio, where there’s a view of the runway. I sit out in the dense air and think about Hatsuko’s message for me, life is the treasure, and about making it through tough times. The more I concentrate on those words, the stronger the sense of Codie being present grows, until I remember that making it through tough times,
really
tough times, is what Codie and I have always done. I stare at the runway in the distance so long that the glowing trident of red and gold lights feels like home again.

SIXTY-TWO