by Sarah Bird
“Look!” Bosco calls out, gazing at a pen. “A rare Kerama deer.”
The creature is inexpressibly lovely, a sort of fairy deer about the size of a small Afghan hound. Her big-eyed face comes to a delicate point in a nose she twitches at us with what Bosco interprets to be a plea for rescue.
I leave Moe with Bosco, who is begging her to figure out a way to buy the deer away from its cruel owner. “I could keep her with Hickory,” Bosco pleads.
The boys are in the next tent crowded around an exhibit of banana spiders the size of dinner plates, centipedes big as pull toys, and some more than usually monstrous cockroaches. Several tanks contain lionfish, sea snakes, stonefish.
“Which one’d kill you more deader?” Bob wonders. “Do you think a banana spider could beat a sea snake?”
“No, twerp, it’d drown.”
“But if it could breathe underwater.”
“Bosco?” Abner looks to his sister for a definitive ruling.
Bosco steps up and takes the kind of deep breath that is always a preamble to her reeling out something from the photo memory vault. “Sea snakes inject a neurotoxin that can paralyze a one-hundred-and-sixty-pound man within twenty minutes, leading to a cessation of all autonomic responses and thus to death. So, yes, I think we can safely assume that a sea snake could beat a banana spider. But the most deadly of them all is the stonefish, whose barbed scales inject an even more potent poison.”
“We should dig a moat around Kubasaki Junior High and fill it with stonefish and sea snakes.”
“Yeah,” Abner agrees with his twin. “Then milk the venom from the sea snakes and get a blow gun and shoot darts at Kevin McCloskey and Deirdre Simons—”
“—and Andy McGrath—”
“—Dwight Levitz—”
“—and the whole football team—”
“—and Andrea Sue Deeks—”
“—and the whole pep squad—”
“—and Mr. Pentinotti—”
They gaze at the deadly fish with the deep, homicidal longing that flowers so extravagantly in the unpopular twelve-year-old boy, until a new influx of customers surges into the tent and we are all squeezed into the next section.
This tent is larger than the others but even hotter and has a different smell, a smell of unwashed bodies and a sharper, more acrid odor I can’t identify. A bass rumble of male voices spiked with staccato notes of Okinawan fills the crowded tent.
“I can’t see!” Bob’s high, piping complaint slices through the thrum of harsh voices.
“Hey, the kid can’t see.”
The mass of khaki and olive drab parts and Bob strolls through, with Moe pushing us all ahead so she can stay with her youngest child.
“Ma’am.” A GI who looks barely older than the twins bobs his head to Moe. She smiles sweetly at him and he strong-arms some of his buddies out of our way. We are pushed to the edge of a large round Plexiglas enclosure with a divider down the middle raised to chest height on a plywood platform. Sitting on either side of the divider in the enclosure is a wooden case with one side hinged and snapped shut. The young American men and older Okinawans close back in, crushing us toward the platform. A local man with a broad white sweatband pushing his spiky hair back into a jagged crest passes among the GIs who tower over him. They slap money into the man’s hand, and he scribbles frantically on a small pad.
Moe squeezes in next to me. “What is it? What’s the exhibit?”
“Got me. GIs with bad haircuts?”
Bob stands on tiptoe, searching the enclosure, empty except for the wooden boxes. “Hey! This is a gyp! Where’s the deadly animals?”
The crowd guffaws. Some of the GIs look at Bob as if they might have cute little brothers back home that they miss. The Okinawan man in the headband springs up onto the platform elevating the Plexiglas enclosure and snatches bills held above our heads from the men behind us. When he has collected them all, he smiles warmly at Bob.
“You want see deadree animar?”
Bob nods enthusiastically, beaming as the crowd claps and holds up bottles of Orion beer to toast him.
“You want see deadree animar?” the man asks the entire crowd this time, and we all scream back, “Yes,” my family pleased that everyone thinks our little brother is cute.
“Big sister, I didn’t expect to see you here.” The voice is so close to my ear I feel each warm breath the words are carried on. It is Ron, the OSI guy from the cave. Kit stands behind him, her eyes avoiding mine. Ron’s grin is satisfied, as though he knows all the secrets I have now and all the secrets I will ever have in the future. “How come you ain’t come back to visit me? I promise you, big sister, you want ol’ Ron to like you. Ask Kit here, she tell you.” His fake black accent gives me the creeps.
“You’re too late, Ron. My father already knows everything.”
“I know that. Knew it all along.” He leans in close to me so that Kit cannot hear. “Not you we got to worry about now, is it?” I pretend I don’t know that he’s talking about Kit. That Kit is the one we have to worry about.
“You want see deadree animar?” the sweat-banded man in the center of the ring asks a third time.
The crowd roars again.
“Okay. Okay.” The Okinawan raises his hands, palms up, above his head, pretending to be beleaguered.
Ron strokes my neck as if he were gentling a high-strung horse. “You wanna see some deadly animals, come see me, big sister.”
I swat his hand away. He laughs.
The man inside the ring straddles the divider and walks to the wooden cases. A scribble of claws scratching on wood comes from one box. The man leans down and reaches each of his hands out toward the latch on each box, pauses, and leans down toward Bob. “This whuh you wan? This whuh you get.”
The edge of menace in his voice alarms Bob, who turns to Moe. She squeezes past the men pressing in on us and pulls Bob close as the crowd howls for the man to get on with the show.
Just as Moe turns to me to say, “I don’t like this,” the man flips the door latches on both boxes and lifts them up. A snake lands in a writhing clump on one side of the divider. On the other side a streak of fur, claws, and teeth coalesces into an animal with a thick brownish-black coat that is part ferret, part weasel, and part cat.
The tender jumps out of the enclosure.
The snake spirals into an upright coil. A small hood swells on either side of its head.
“Habu! Habu! Habu!” The men pick up the cheer.
The frenzied animal on the other side of the Plexiglas divider moves like quicksilver, tacking frantically about in front of the snake.
“Mongoose! Mongoose! Mongoose!” This cheer is much louder.
At the same instant, Moe and I realize what is happening. She grips Bob. “Where’s Bosco?” I glance down to where my sister was standing a moment ago. She’s gone. Ron is grinning behind me. I elbow my way past him but still can’t find Bosco.
“Where is she?” Moe has to scream to be heard over the crowd bellowing for whichever creature they’ve bet on. I put my palms up to signal that I can’t find her.
In the enclosure, the habu has coiled itself up and is swaying back and forth like a cobra, tracking the mongoose stalking it on the other side of the divider. The tender leans over and teases the crowd, teases the animals, by almost lifting up the divider separating the snake and the mongoose, then slamming it back into place.
“Find her! Find Bosco!” Moe orders me, shoving aside the GIs.
“Pit ’em! Pit ’em!” Southern accents call out for the tender to pull the divider. He holds up his hand and the crowd grows silent. I lean in close to the enclosure as I search the crowd on the other side for Bosco and recognize the odor I hadn’t been able to place earlier. It comes from the fear-soured shit of the animals.
With a dramatic flourish the tender lifts the divider and the mongoose charges the oscillating snake. The snake strikes but hits only a blur shadowing the mongoose. The two animals square off. The
mongoose dodges to the right, then feints left. The habu mirrors his every move, snapping its hooded head from one side to the other, pivoting to keep the mongoose in sight as he darts about, trying to slip behind the snake.
Its head swiveling imperiously, its long tongue flicking in and out, the habu tracks the mongoose. The sinuous swing of its head momentarily hypnotizes the mongoose. He freezes on tensed, catlike legs as the habu rears up above him, its neck hood swelling until it looms over the mongoose as inevitable as night.
I finally spot Bosco on the other side of the ring, her face mashed against the Plexiglas wet with her tears and snot. I yell to Moe. Moe orders me to get her.
The mongoose unfreezes and skitters back and forth, back and forth, with a dizzying relentlessness until he breaks out with blurring speed to attack the habu’s back. Reeling, the habu jerks around, slamming its hooded neck against the mongoose’s bared fangs.
Though greatly outnumbered, the habu supporters outyell the mongoose fans. I fight my way toward Bosco as the mongoose fakes an attack on the habu. The habu lunges forward too precipitously. In the split second that the habu is off-balance, the mongoose switches back and strikes. I grab Bosco and try to pull her away from the Plexiglas, but she clings to it, her fingers locked spasmodically.
The mongoose clamps his teeth onto the back of the habu’s neck. The snake convulses, twisting furiously to find the mongoose with its fangs. The mongoose rides with the thrashing contortions. The tent falls silent. The habu’s body roils about as the mongoose methodically ingests the snake’s head. Bones delicate as toothpicks crunch in the mongoose’s jaws. It is the only sound in the tent.
“Stop this!”
A current, the current that has flowed between each of us children and Moe since birth, sparks. From each corner of the tent Bob, Buzz, Abner, Bosco, and I all turn to Moe with a tropism as unthinking as flowers following the sun. Even Kit connects, and we are again what we always have been, one organism bound from birth.
We all look at Moe, and when she begins breathing again, so do we. The bones of the habu continue to snap. Moe stares at the spectacle as if seeing it for the first time.
“This is what you consider fit entertainment for children? This? One creature eating another alive? No child should see this. Any of this.” She swings her hand wide in a gesture that takes in the old woman giving a python a blow job, children dangling from a Huey, GIs cursing bar girls, runways with B-52 bombers taking off every three minutes. “You should all be ashamed of yourselves.”
A path clears in front of her, in front of all of us as we make our way to her side. Only Kit does not go to her.
“Kit?”
“I’m staying.” Kit moves closer to Ron, who puts his arm over her shoulders.
Moe marches back to Kit, clamps an iron grip on her wrist, and jerks her daughter forward. “Like hell you are. You’re coming home.”
Kit looks to Ron to decide the matter. Ron lifts his arms as if giving his permission, and Moe wins the struggle simply because Kit can’t stand the embarrassment and Moe no longer cares at all.
Kool
Lucky’s chirrup wakes me. A haze of predawn light fades the absolute blackness of tropical night. I listen to Lucky on the ceiling above me, she listening for the telltale rustle of a cockroach. From outside comes the scrape of the aluminum leg of a lawn chair across concrete.
Moe is lighting one Kool off another as I slide the patio door open. “Did I wake you up?”
“No. Lucky did.”
The chair I pull up next to hers is light as a basket.
“C-one-forty-one,” she says, lifting the red ember of her cigarette to follow the lights and afterburner of the cargo plane sailing through the darkness. Two B-52S follow. Moe seems so absorbed in their flights that it surprises me when she speaks. “I want you to try out for that contest.” Moe’s voice is authoritative. She has her old spunk back. I wonder what drains the energy from her in my father’s presence.
“Kit’s contest? The dance contest?”
“Bosco’s right, you’re ten times the dancer your sister is.”
“But it’s her contest.”
“It’s not her contest.”
“She would flip out if I entered.”
“Why? Why should you not enter? Why should you simply abdicate? Cede the playing field? Bernie, you’ve done that your whole life because that’s what you’ve seen me do for most of your life, at least since we left Japan.”
“What happened, Moe? After we left Japan?”
Moe hisses out a mentholated sigh. “Aw, Bern, you don’t want to talk about that.”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Why? That water is so far under the bridge, they’re drinking it in China now. The important point is that I set a bad example for you, always giving in on everything, and I don’t want you to give in on this. I want you to enter that contest.”
“It’s ridiculous to even discuss this. Kit is going to be the most beautiful girl who tries out, and the most beautiful girl always wins.”
“Bernie, I don’t like that kind of talk. You have your own charm, your own appeal. Besides, when you dance something happens. You come to life. The music moves through you and you get this kind of radiance.”
“Moe—”
“No, I’m serious. You get a glow on you like it’s Singapore Sling night at the club.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
For a second I almost believe her. “Moe, even if I—you know—tried out and some miracle happened and I—you know—won, I still couldn’t leave you. I mean, Jesus, if, if”—I snort to indicate what a preposterous idea this is—“if I did win, Kit would be so pissed off. With Dad gone, you could never handle her. It’d be RIF City.”
“That is my problem. Bernie, listen. I was only slightly older than you when I finished nursing school and got on a troopship for North Africa. I left your widowed grandmother all by herself back in Lafayette, Indiana, running a corner grocery store selling cold cuts for nineteen cents a pound and sleeping on a chair at the cash register because she couldn’t afford to hire anyone to give her a break. But I left, and you have to leave. I had my life. I took it from my mother. You have to take yours from me. Maybe you have to take it from Kit too. You have to at least try.”
“There’s no way. There’s not even any good music to dance to on this island.”
“I’ll get you music. I’ll sing for you myself if I have to. Look, I’ve gotten music for Kit and either bought, sewn, or had costumes, gowns, and uniforms made for every cheerleader tryout, every homecoming court, prom, and pageant your sister has ever been involved in. And I’ll do it for her again for this dance contest. But this time I’m also going to do everything I do for your sister for you too. Capisce?”
“She’s going to be pissed.”
“Machts nichts, bebby.” It’s great to hear Moe’s snappy World War II nurse talk again. “You were not put on this earth to make Kit Root happy.” She sucks in a giant inhalation. “You were put on this earth to make me happy!”
For just that second, her laughter drowns out the distant roar of the jet engines.
Benjo
Koza’s main street at high noon smells even more of diesel fuel, cement dust, and benjo ditches than it had at night. A gritty film of coral dust covers everything and is the reason that even the tiniest scratch becomes infected. There are no GIs in Koza during the daytime. Club My Place. Club Champion. Club Pink Pussy Cat. The Okay Joe. The Manhattan. The Harlem. Aces High. Blue Lady. All the clubs are empty. Papa-sans in string T-shirts and rubber zoris either lean against their darkened doorways leisurely smoking Violet brand cigarettes or wash down the sidewalk in front of their clubs with skinny hoses.
Moe, marching out ahead of Kit, Bosco, and me, glances around at the snarl of shops packed one against another. She stops in front of a fish store to check the slip of paper in her hand with the name and address of a sew girl written on it. Behind us fish are piled silv
er on green palm leaves, and Okinawan housewives in Mother Hubbard aprons buy thin slices of scarlet red tuna. Next door at the Pink Shoe Shoe Store, schoolgirls in middy blouses and pigtails cluster at the window, pointing to dusty displays of plastic shoes. Bar girls running errands bump past us as Moe gets her bearings. While we wait, Bosco plays her favorite game, Find a Funny Sign.
“Look, there’s a good one.” She points to a traffic sign that advises CARE FOR PEDESTRIANS!
I find the Memory From You curio shop, the Sexy Boy Hari Cut BarBar shop.
“There’s the best one!”
I follow Bosco’s finger to a banner fluttering outside Lee’s Chinese Bazaar, a two-story structure so new the joint compound is still streaked with dark gray where it hasn’t dried yet. Brass trays, vases, pitchers, plaques, candleholders, candle snuffers, ashtrays, bells, birdcages—mountains of fake ivory knickknacks are arrayed behind Lee’s windows. Dozens of arrangements of tropical flowers—birds of paradise, orchids—are lined up against the shop. The banner fluttering above it all reads GLAND OPENING.
“Chinese don’t have an r in their language,” Bosco explains as I study the sign. “At least not in Mandarin.”
“Gland Opening. Can’t beat that,” I rule. “That’s a definite winner.”
Bosco’s face lights up and goes east and west in a rare grin.
Moe stops a housewife with a string bag full of huge white daikon radishes and points to the paper, asking for directions.
“You’d think she’d notice the woman has no idea what she’s saying.” Kit, who started out in a bad mood, is moving rapidly toward a full-blown snit. The woman is very pleased with Moe’s efforts to communicate and answers in an incomprehensible stream of rapid-fire Okinawan.
“I’m sorry.” Moe reverts to English. “I only know skoshi Japanese and no Okinawan. We’re looking for a sew girl.” Moe pantomimes a needle pulling thread. “Sew girl.”
