by Sarah Bird
I laugh when Van sings about the stadium that became the transcriber’s plea, Stay tea! Yum! Out in the fuzzy crowd a few guys laugh back. I stare right into their faces as if we’re partners, dancing together. I do a few swirly hand claps. They clap back. I work in a high-voltage patty-cake and they play along. Heads start bobbing, hands clapping on the beat, shoulders hitchhiking back and forth. Kit’s people, they’re dancing with me. And then, right at my feet, right at the edge of the stage, is Kit, close enough that I can make out her expression.
It’s not pity anymore. Something on the far end from pity now strains my sister’s pretty face, compressing her eyes into a hard squint, and I know then how good I am. For the first time in her life, my sister sees me as a threat, and I pounce on the moment like the herd runt who’s waited her whole life for the big dog to show just one sign of weakness. When I finally see it, I go feral. I no longer want to beat Kit; I want to rip her throat out. I only want to be good to show how bad she is.
Gravity lets go of me and I channel nothing but rhythm. As Van fades out I have a good chunk of the crowd skating from side to side with me, clapping out each stroke. I am so drunk with this moment that I applaud them when the song ends.
Like the referee in a heavyweight fight, Bobby Moses bounces onstage before the song clapping can fade, holds my hand in the air, and declares me the winner.
Kit glares at me as shocked and outraged as Cinderella if the glass slipper had turned out to fit one of the ugly stepsisters.
Joy
“So, you live here on Okinawa, Mr. Moses?”
“Right off Highway One, Mrs. Root. On the beach near Camp Hansen.”
“Well, okay. About this trip—”
“Look, Mrs. Root, let’s not beat around the bush. You want to know who I am before you send your daughter off to Tokyo with me. Here’s a copy of my OSI report. I probably don’t have to tell you them guys is thorough. They can’t find anything on me, there’s nothing to find.”
“Oh, well, that’s not necess—You were wounded in the Battle of Sicily?”
“Wounded? No. Dysentery.”
“I was with Third General Hospital.”
“No kidding. Were you of the Hebraic persuasion before you married?”
“No.”
“You musta been the only shiksa in the outfit.”
“I joined the unit late. Most of them were from Mount Sinai. Who was your nurse?”
“Minnie … Minnie—”
“Minnie Mandelbaum! Minnie was your nurse?”
“Minnie the Doucher. That’s what we called her. She was such a douche bag. Pardon my French.”
“Minnie could be a pill.”
“Pill? Mrs. Root, the Doucher was the whole frigging pharmacy. With a castor oil chaser.”
“Mr. Moses—”
“Bobby, or I’m gonna start calling you Mrs. Major.”
“All right … Bobby, where exactly will you be performing?”
“Like it said on the flyer, Mrs. Root—”
“Moe.”
“Okay, Moe. Moe? And you got a daughter calls herself Bernie? So, let me see. We got Moe and Bernie. Sounds like a coupla old Jews sitting around talking about prostate problems.… You have a very nice laugh, Moe. Very nice indeed. What is that scent you’re wearing, Joy? Gotta be Joy. Only one thing smells as good as Joy and that’s Joy. Nakashima! Who do I have to blow to get some service over here? Whatcha drinking there, Moe? Tumbler of Windex? Why do all Okinawan cocktails look like they came from Jupiter? Yeah, get the lady another one of whatever that is, Chivas for me, and another Shirley Temple for the kid.”
“And where is it you will be appearing?”
“The gigs? Right. We’ll be playing all the O clubs in the Tokyo area. Some noncom.”
“Enlisted?”
“No enlisted. Officers only. Tachikawa, Johnson, Yokota—”
“You’re playing Yokota Air Base?”
“No, Yokota Home for Wayward Girls. Of course, Yokota Air Base.”
“We were stationed at Yokota.”
“No kidding. When abouts was that?”
“ ’Fifty-six to ’sixty.”
“Oh, yeah, back when we were still the conquering heroes.”
“I suppose.”
“Suppose? No, I promise you, Moe, that was the greatest time and place in all of recorded history to be an American. The real hurt of the war was off. We pumped all that money into their economy during the Korean War. They were still grateful. Maybe a little pissed off we dropped the big one on them, but still we hadn’t come in and done what they would have done. What they did do in Nanking, Manchuria, the Philippines. They knew they got off light. Was your husband flying reconnaissance back then?”
“How did you know—”
“You’re checking me out, I checked you out. Moe, let’s cut to the chase here. I would have to be the biggest yutz in the world to mess in any way, shape, or form with the daughter of an Air Force officer. Just let me assure you, Mrs. Root, Bobby Moses is no yutz. Besides, if it is any comfort, I’m queer.”
“You’re—”
“As a two-dollar bill. My father wanted a boy. My mother wanted a girl. They’re both satisfied. What can I say? Your little girl could be spread-eagled naked on my bed and I’d be more interested in the pansy pattern on the quilt than in her.”
“Oh. I see.”
“Nakashima, you asleep over there? Let’s keep ’em coming.”
“Bobby, I really think—”
“What? You worried I’m gonna be compromising your honor now?”
“No, of course not. It’s just that—”
“Okay then. L’chaim.”
Clink.
“Next year in Jerusalem.”
“Moe, you’re a gasser.”
“The docs at Third General used to say that.”
“Moe, I can see where your daughters got their looks. Maybe you’re the Root girl I should be taking with me.”
“A go-go girl with varicose veins. That’s just what the world is waiting for.”
“Moe used to sing with the USO.”
“No kidding.”
“Bernie, it wasn’t the USO. It was just a bunch of us who got together and messed around. Played for unit dances. The Replacement Depot. Little piddly things.”
“The Repple Depple? You sang at the Repple Depple?”
“Well … yes.”
“No! Of course! You’re Nurse Mohoric, Songbird of the Third. I heard you!”
“Now, Bobby, how on earth would you remember that?”
“Hell, yes, I remember. I shipped in in ’forty-four. Green as gooseshit. Stepped off the boat and watched them load up the coffins of the guys I was replacing. Only thing kept me from wigging out was you singing that night. Of course. I shoulda spotted it right off. Voice of an angel. Face of an angel. Kid, your mother had it. You coulda gone pro. What was that you sang, Moe?”
“There were a few.”
“ ‘Don’t Get around Much Anymore.’ That was the one. Knocked my socks off. Sang it the way Duke woulda wanted it sung. Hey, Naki, this thing in tune?”
“Bobby, I think that piano is only for the paid performers. Are you sure you should—Why, Bobby, you play very well.”
“So sing already.”
“I don’t—I can’t remember the words.”
“Come on, come on, if I’m gonna make a total ass of myself least you can do is help out.”
“Heard they crowded the floor.”
“Moe! Six kids and you still got it!”
“You liar.”
“Moe! Take it!”
“Don’t get around much anymore.”
“Somewhere over the rainbow … Moe, you knocked me out with this one. Sing with me.”
“No, Bobby. I … I can’t. I don’t sing that one anymore. Ever.”
“Moe, you look a little pale. Forget ‘somewhere over the Rainbow.’ Here, how ’bout this?”
By the time Bobby and Moe work their way
through “That Old Black Magic,” “Don’t Sit under the Apple Tree with Anyone Else but Me,” “In a Small Hotel,” “I’ll Be Seeing You,” “As Time Goes By,” and finish with “Mairzy Doats,” Moe is bombed and I am on my way to Tokyo in one week.
Smoke
The Okinawa weather, always hot, turns sultry and still in the week before I leave. The afternoon rains, when they do come, pour down as if they are holding a grudge against the island, leaving it limp and steaming. Kit all but vanishes after the dance contest. For the last four days, I’ve only seen my sister very late at night when she comes in and Moe yells at her for staying out until all hours and not telling anyone where she is. Kit doesn’t say a word. She has completely stopped talking to me or Moe. Kit doesn’t answer, even when Moe slaps her and screams that she will not tolerate this behavior. Even when she cries and begs Kit to behave or she’ll get us all RIF’d.
On the fourth night, when she comes back to our room, I pretend to be asleep, then lie in the darkness as she bangs around until dropping into bed. Kit has been exuding a progressively more dangerous combination of odors. The first night it was just cigarette smoke and stale beer. Then bourbon. Then pot. Tonight, a fragrance emanates from her that is dense and resinous. After she falls asleep or passes out, I creep from my bed and watch her. Though Kit seems deeply asleep, her body remains tense and her eyelids twitch a frantic Morse code. I consider not going to Tokyo with Bobby in three days, but the prospect of being around Kit when she is awake and hating me even more than usual is unthinkable.
I lie in bed for a long time, listening to Lucky chirping in the darkness.
On the fifth night, Moe and I sit out on the patio late, hours after Bob, his nose peeling, his eyes a permanently inflamed chlorine red, the twins reeking their new boy odors, and Bosco, sore all over from attempting to teach Hickory the Horse to jump, have gone to sleep. The webbing on the aluminum chairs creaks when we shift around, trying to catch any breeze blowing up the long hill from the East China Sea.
Moe stubs her cigarette out and turns to me. “If anything happens that you don’t like, and I do mean anything, the tiniest hint of funny business, you are to go directly to the Dependent Liaison Officer on any base. Or to the chaplain. Or any senior-grade officer, for that matter. You have the MATS number. If you need to call, for anything, just take that number and go to—”
“You already told me all this about eight thousand times. I’m not a total child, you know.” The more frantic Moe gets, the more I have to hide my own nervousness.
Moe sighs. Her chair scrapes as she settles back into it. “My mother did the same thing to me before I shipped out. By the time I left, I was so glad to get away from her, I didn’t even think to be scared, getting on a troopship, zigzagging across the Atlantic. I guess we mothers are good for that anyway.”
“Driving their kids crazy? Yeah, you’re doing a pretty good job.”
“Hey! At least I’m not crying and hanging on you and telling you that you’ll never see me alive on this earth again.”
“Did Granma do that? Don’t get any ideas.”
Moe snorts out a warning to me not to get too sassy. For the first time that night, a good solid breeze swoops up the long hill. Moe holds her nightgown out. “Ewww, that’s more like it.”
I stand, turn around, and hike my nightie up to make Moe laugh at me airing my backside.
We are both holding out our nighties for the breeze to loft into them when a car pulls up out front. This is what we have been waiting for. We drop our nightgowns and creep around to the side of the house, where we stand hidden in shadows and watch as a midnight-blue Porsche glides to a stop, silent as a manta ray. The passenger door bursts open and Kit steps out in a haze of smoke, like an angel rising to heaven on a cloud. She stumbles, barely catches herself, and loudly curses the garden hose.
Ron leans over and hisses out the window. “Hey now, don’t be waking the neighborhood.”
Kit flips him a bird and staggers into the house. Ron watches for a moment; then the Porsche disappears in the darkness. I wonder how he can afford a Porsche on an airman’s salary and don’t like any of the answers.
Several planes take off in the distance far below us before Moe speaks. “Well, we know now why OSI hasn’t thrown us all off the island.”
“He’s just a file clerk. There’s only so long he can lose reports. Look, Moe, I don’t have to go.”
“No! You are going and that is the end of that discussion.”
“She’s going to get us RIF’d.”
“No one is going to get RIF’d. Your father will be home soon. If I have to guard the door with a shotgun, I won’t let your sister out until he gets back. Then he can deal with her. I know I never could. She’d never let me. Your father would never let me. That was their mistake. My mistake was ever letting them keep me from trying.”
The next day the very worst happens: Kit and the Corvette are gone. That night, Moe and I sit up until the sun rises, our ears straining to catch the telltale rumble of a Corvette engine, but Kit does not return. Bosco, horrified by Kit’s outlaw behavior, slides open the screen door shortly after dawn.
“Kit’s not here yet, is she? She hasn’t brought Daddy’s car back, has she?” Bosco is already hyperventilating, and I realize that, if I weren’t here, Bosco more than likely would be the one sitting up with Moe.
“Because Kit’s not in bed,” she goes on. “She’s not in the bathroom. She’s not in the kitchen. She’s not here, is she? She’s took the ’Vette and went to the north end of the island, didn’t she? They’re going to put her picture on TV, and we’ll get RIF’d.” Bosco pauses only long enough to gulp several breaths before wailing, “I can’t leave Hickory. If Kit gets us RIF’d, we have to bring Hickory! I know I said when I got him that I knew we could only keep him while we were here and they would never let us bring him into the States anyway, but I don’t care. He has to come, and”—Bosco makes a colossal effort and calms herself—“and if he can’t, then I’ll get a job here—probably cleaning stables—and I’ll stay with him.”
“Bosco, go get some cereal.”
Bosco looks at me, stricken by my betrayal of her, of her love for Hickory the Horse. She runs into the house, sobbing madly.
The sun slices into Moe’s gray eyes. “This is not good.”
“I know.”
For the rest of the day the three of us wait anxiously, surreptitiously monitoring the television. Bob and the twins bang in and out the screen door all day, consume vats of Kool-Aid, Fritos, and bean dip from a can, and never notice that their sister is missing. Moe and I whisper, trying to keep Bosco from hearing, as we debate what to do. By late afternoon, Moe is in favor of calling the APs.
“You call the Apes and the first thing they’re going to do is notify Dad’s CO. The second thing they’ll do is put her face on TV. The third is ship us off-island.”
“That wouldn’t be the biggest tragedy this family has endured.”
“Dad will flip.”
Both of us fall silent at this prospect, which is when we notice Bosco snuffling softly into a sofa pillow.
“Mary Colleen Root, I told you, no one is getting RIF’d.”
“It’s not that.” She pulls her face away from the sodden pillow. “I don’t want my sister to be a white slave.”
“What are you talking about now?”
“That’s what happens to girls who go to the north end of the island. I heard Heather Jameson tell Donna Strickland. The GIs take the girls, sell them, and they’re shipped out to Bangkok that night. When their parents finally find them, most of them are dead from being sexed too much.”
“Where do you get this?”
“I didn’t want to tell you because then you’d worry even more. But that’s what happens. That’s the part they don’t put on TV.”
“That’s it. This discussion is over. I’m calling the APs.”
I pull the phone out of Moe’s hand. “Don’t. I know where she is. I’ll
go get her.”
“You know where she is? How long have you known?”
I don’t answer.
“And you haven’t said anything? For crying in a bucket, Bernadette, I know you two have your differences, but she’s your sister, for Christ’s sake! We’re all in this together. How am I supposed to keep this family in one piece if you won’t even—”
“I’ll get her! I said I’d get her!”
I get lost a couple of times on the coral roads, my headlights tilting crazily off high banks of bamboo and habu grass that stab black spears into a navy-blue sky. It is completely dark by the time I reach the cave near Naha. The red Corvette is in the parking lot, next to Ron’s Porsche.
I slip on the steep trail, scraping my knees. Finally, I see a slit of light marking the cave’s entrance, grab the gnarled roots of a pine, and pull myself up toward it.
Smoke vents out the cave opening and mists the scene inside. A battery-powered tape player fills the cave with the echoey drone of a sitar. Three girls lie beside the fire, their bodies curved around the flames they watch with hypnotized stares. A couple of GIs sit behind two of the girls, remembering occasionally to massage a shoulder when they can break out of their own trances. The only actual movement is provided by Kit, who stands just beyond the circle of bodies, swaying to the music and watching her hands undulate in front of her face.
No one notices when I step in. In the shadows, two couples make love. I think I see Ron’s pale shoulders in a far corner.
Kit’s glassy-eyed stare fixes uncertainly on me. “What are you doing here?” she asks with detached pique, as if she were addressing an unpleasant vision in a dream.
I grab Kit’s elbow and start for the exit. “Come on. We’re going home.”
Kit comes to life as if my touch had shocked her. “Get your motherfucking hands off me.” She jerks her elbow away, staggering when the movement pulls her off balance. The girls on the ground look up at us as if we were appearing on a distant screen.
“Look, Moe is worried. She’s going to call the Apes.”
