by Sarina Dorie
He shrugged. “I’ll have to go out hunting again today.”
A mother with a child in her arms and another hugging her legs, stared at Taishi, openly with anger. One of the other elders shook his head and muttered under his breath. No one in the old Chiramantepjin tribe would ever behave so insolently to their nipa. I felt embarrassed for him.
“You’ve got to stop bringing in more children,” a grandfather said.
Taishi continued smiling. “You didn’t say that when I found your nephew, ne? Family is important. It binds us together and gives us hope. Our people need hope.”
His eyes met mine. My chest swelled. He was talking about me. I gave him hope.
One of the grandmothers reluctantly smiled at him. Grandmother Ami nodded with approval. Soon everyone was talking at once in excitement about all the things they hoped for: sugar fruits and fresh game and a planet free of starships. My brother was magic. I didn’t know how he did it. He smiled and it made everyone else smile, even crabby grandmothers.
“Maybe you’ll find my Mama someday,” a little boy said.
Taishi patted the child’s shoulder.
“We should break camp today and head south instead of hunting,” the grandfather tanning a small tanuki hide said. “We’ve been here too long.”
A starship flew overhead, the glint of metal catching my eye. This one was a quiet one. A plume of yellow smoke trailed after it.
“There are too many gaijin to the south,” one of the grandmothers argued. It took me a moment to recognize her from my old village. She was missing part of her foot and her head was nearly bald now.
One of the boys about a year older than me stared at Shipo and me. He was so thin it took me a while to recognize him too. It was Munin, Ayay’s cousin. My hope plummeted. This would be exactly like the old village after all, whether I wanted it to be or not. Only without my parents.
“I will fetch my geari wife.” Taishi turned back to me. “Then I will introduce everyone.” He slipped off as the elders bickered about leaving or staying.
I had a bad feeling about my new tribe.
Geari was the word for social obligation. I imagined his geari wife would be ugly or crippled, or there would be some obvious reason he felt obligated to care for her.
As soon as he came back, one arm around a pale, foreign woman holding a bundle in her arms, Shipo screamed.
“A kamuy!” She ducked behind one of the tents.
The woman’s skin glowed whiter than any I’d ever seen. She did resemble a kamuy, but I knew she wasn’t. She was worse.
“It’s all right.” Taishi called after Shipo. “This is Faith-san. She’s our friend and my geari wife. She isn’t going to hurt you.”
I stared in horror. I wanted to run too, but my feet were rooted to the spot. My body grew as rigid as a tree. His wife was one of the off-worlders. She was fair with blue eyes and yellow hair. Burn scars marred her skin like the ones Nonno once had, only this woman’s were worse, all the way down one side of her face and on her arm.
As if a geari wife was bad enough, it had to be a gaijin. As if an off-worlder wasn’t bad enough, it had to be her, the one from the festival. She was the woman who had taken my brother from me in the first place. All those years I’d been without any family, and she’d been with Taishi. Not me.
It was hard to be afraid of the gaijin when I resented her so much.
Grandmother Ami and Grandfather Rethar stared at the ground, out of respect or fear, I couldn’t tell. Neither said a word. Grandmother Konkani shook her head and said what was in my mind. “You brought us into a camp with one of those white devils.”
Faith looked like she’d been slapped. She tried to step back, but Taishi kept his arm firmly around her shoulders. She ducked her head down and kept the burned part of her face turned away, but I could still see the shiny pink scars. The bundle in her arms squirmed.
“Faith-san is a gaiyojin,” Taishi said, using the polite term for off-worlder, “but her family were not the people who attacked us. Her family was killed by a different tribe of off-worlders. Her sister was taken from her and she has no means to go home. We are her family now.”
The bundle in her arms stirred again and made a pathetic whimper.
“This is my family,” Taishi said. He looked into my eyes. “This is your family.”
Since the attack, I had been without my village and family, but I had always had Shipo and Nonno. I had Grandmother Ami, Grandmother Konkani and Grandfather Rethar. Even when I thought I had no one, I had people I belonged to. Because of this, I was an insider. This woman would always be an outsider, a gaijin, or sisam.
Taishi held out his arms for the bundle. “This is my daughter, Michi.”
From the mop of blonde hair I could see the little girl looked like his geari wife. Her eyes were large and blue like the gaijin’s, but something about her looked like Taishi as well.
Grandmother Konkani and Grandmother Ami whispered something back and forth. I could tell they didn’t like the off-worlder. I wasn’t sure I liked her either. She was different and we couldn’t trust people who were different. Still, this was my brother. Even if he was foolish enough to make a gaijin his wife, he was family, and it was my duty to obey him. I wished he hadn’t found me and “saved me” now.
“I don’t want to bow to this little nipa,” Grandmother Konkani said. “And I’m certainly not bowing to the sisam.”
“Do you want to eat tonight?” Grandmother Ami asked.
I stepped forward, trying to be brave. I bowed to Faith even though it made me want to vomit. The gesture was meant to save my brother’s face, not hers. “Nice to meet you, Heisu-san.” That was as close as I could get to saying her name. “My name is Sumiko.”
Seconds later, the elders in my party also bowed.
Shipo slipped out her hiding spot and joined us. “I want to see the baby,” she said.
My brother smiled and his shoulders relaxed. The baby was cute at least. She didn’t look like an evil kamuy even if my brother’s wife did. She was blonde with blue eyes, but her cheeks reminded me of Taishi when he’d been younger. Her skin wasn’t as fair as a gaijin’s, but still lighter than my brother’s. She giggled when I tickled her.
That night I lay in a tent instead of under the open stars like I was used to. Shipo and I shivered under a blanket we shared with another girl and hugged each other for warmth. I hadn’t ever been this cold in my life. Of course, I had also thought that the night before and the night before that. I’d never known cold like this when I’d lived in the old Chiramantepjin village in the jungle. Brown clouds blocked out the sunlight most days and the air smelled like excrement. Everything was harder these days.
I kept thinking about my mother and father and how much I missed them. Sometimes I couldn’t remember what my mother looked like anymore, only what she looked like in her eboshi. I could still see my father’s smiling face, looking at me with tenderness in his eyes. The more I thought about them the more my heart ached. I kept trying to stop remembering them, but I couldn’t stop.
Shipo nudged me. “Do you remember the first day we met?” she whispered. “This would never have happened to me if I hadn’t gone with you that day.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I didn’t answer. Sometimes I thought about that too. I wondered if I should have been in the village when the ships attacked. I would be with my mother and father, and I had thought, with my brother as well. Dead or alive we would be together.
Today had changed everything. I had a family now. Sort of. Even if a gaijin was part of it. Shipo had a village, but still no family.
Shipo whispered, “The other children said you were unlucky because of your name, but if I hadn’t followed you into the jungle I probably would have died like my parents. Your name has been lucky.”
“Huh,” I said. I’d never thought of that. “But I disobeyed my parents. I made kamuy angry and my brother only just found m
e.”
She pinched my arm. “Oh, Sumiko-chan, you can be such a dummy sometimes.”
“Ow!” I squealed.
“Better to make the kamuy angry than the gaijin, ne?” Shipo giggled, but I didn’t think her joke was funny. I would have pinched her back, but her words stopped me. “If you hadn’t stepped forward and bowed today, I don’t think anyone else would have. I’m lucky I have a friend who is so brave.”
“Me? Brave?” I wanted to tell her all the ways she was wrong.
“Be quiet and go to sleep, or I’ll feed you to the chiramantep!” my brother grumbled from the darkness of the camp.
Had everyone overheard our conversation? I clamped my hand over my mouth. Even with my brother’s threat, I couldn’t help smiling. Maybe my new life wouldn’t be so horrible after all.
Four months passed, the days stretching by in my new tribe. I was eight years old and I knew better than to wander off from the adults, but I was very bad at minding my elders, having practiced so little of it for many years.
Shipo and I started off gathering berries with Rina, one of the mothers. Her six-year-old shoveled berries into his mouth instead of putting them in the basket. Rina’s baby cried almost non-stop. I was miserable being stuck with Rina.
“Hurry up,” Rina scolded me. “At this rate we’ll be picking all day.”
Our foraging was interrupted when a steamship flew overhead and distracted the adults. It flew low, circling as if in search for something. Everyone dove for cover and stared at the sky in expectation. The elders prayed to the kamuy of the land to protect us.
I wasn’t worried about this ship. It was puffy with balloons. Faith had said this style of airship wasn’t for battle and full of warriors, nor did it have the technology for leveling mountains. She was a gaijin, so she would know.
Shipo and I used the distraction of the ship to slip around the bushes and slink off into the high purple grass. It was hot and there was no shade. The trees weren’t very high here in the savanna and the ground was flat. We had to crouch down so we wouldn’t be seen. The burble of a stream greeted our ears as we drew closer. Shipo and I were of one mind and we slipped off to the pebbled beach, scouring it for chiramantep stones, the sparkling red rocks that were the perfect size for our pebble games.
Grandmother Ami didn’t like us to collect them because she said they were dirty. The chiramantep passed them out in their urine when they were sick. My brother didn’t like us to collect them because he said the gaijin valued them and they would hunt us down if they knew we had them. He hated the stones and said that’s why the off-worlders hadn’t left our world yet, because they wanted stupid rocks.
Faith called them red diamonds. She said there would be no more chiramantep after some gaijin nipa named Lord Klark figured out they came from animals and not the ground. She didn’t want us to collect them either.
That’s why Shipo and I had to be secretive. Not just because my brother would be mad, but because the off-worlders might catch us and steal us away.
Shipo dug at the brown and gray stones with her toes. “We need a good excuse when we get back or else Grandmother Ami will be mad at us.”
I crouched down, poking my fingers into the shallow water. The stream was a muddy trickle and it was just as warm as the muggy air. “If we collect some berries, we can say we went to find some bigger bushes.”
She smacked my arm. “We don’t have any baskets for berries.”
Plants rustled from the other side of the stream.
“Tanuki?” she asked.
I shushed her and listened. Tanuki dogs sometimes built dens near the streams and you didn’t want to make loud noises that would spook them because they might attack if they had young. Their horns were sharp and teeth were like daggers, even if they were small.
Their meat was also delicious. My brother would be very happy if we found a family to make into our supper. My belly grumbled.
I put a finger to my lips and sneaked across the trickle of water.
The grunting grew louder.
“That isn’t tanuki,” I whispered.
Shipo tilted her head, her brown eyes growing wide. “I think it is a baby buta.” There were no wild boars in the savannas, but they had been plentiful in the jungle.
“What if it’s gaijin?” I asked. Just the idea of meeting one of them sent shivers up my arms. It was hard not to think about the men in red coats in the jungle who had killed those children and grandmothers. I wanted to run.
Fearless Shipo swatted away a beetle fly that landed on my forehead. “Do you hear anyone speaking sisam?”
I didn’t hear the gaijin tongue, so maybe we were safe. We parted the grasses, hoping to find a baby buta. Instead we found a man’s bare behind raised up in the air. Shipo started to giggle, but I quickly covered her mouth and shook my head at her.
“Oh, Midori,” said a man’s a husky voice. “Midori” was the word for green in the Isepojin dialect. At first I thought he was stating something was green, then I realized this must be Ursai, and he was saying his wife’s name. Midori let out a breathy sigh.
I put a finger to my lips and we peeked through the purple grasses again. We couldn’t see much besides Midori’s legs wrapped around Ursai’s hairy back. She raked her fingers over him like claws. Their bodies made wet slapping sounds like fish flopping around out of water. It sounded disgusting.
Midori mewed like a wounded animal. I thought he must be hurting her, but then she said, “More. Please, don’t stop.”
I let go of the grass and I covered my own mouth now, afraid the giggles would burst out of me. Suddenly the grunts and squeaks of noises I heard at night in our camp made more sense. This must be what they were doing.
Shipo shook her head, her unkempt hair falling into her face. “Eew,” she whispered. “It’s grown up games.”
I parted the grass again. Ursai’s behind was sweaty and hairy. It was disgusting, but I couldn’t help feeling intrigued by what they were doing. Midori was very pretty, with smooth, hairless skin the color of tree bark. It was hard to see what she found desirable about Ursai with his big, crooked nose and bulky frame. Then again, he was the only other young man in the camp besides my brother, and Taishi already had a wife. She didn’t have many options.
I turned to Shipo.
Her eyes grew wide, looking past me. “Iya!” She scrambled back, crinkling the grass.
I reached toward her, about to clamp my hand over her mouth, but she pulled back too quickly. Long blades of purple grass separated us. She would alert them of our presence if she was so loud. A hand closed around my arm and yanked me backward.
Shipo ran off and left me alone. She didn’t even scream, so much the better for her not getting caught.
“Just what do you think you’re doing?” Faith-san asked in a stern tone, making no attempt to be quiet.
The grunting and moaning abruptly stopped.
My brother’s gaijin wife turned me to face her. In one arm she held Michi, Taishi’s two-year-old daughter. The other was locked around my wrist. Her cheeks were flushed red against the white of her skin. Her yellow hair was heaped on her head in a messy bun which showed off the alien contours of her long nose and large blue eyes.
I probably would have hated her for being an off-worlder, except I’d come to find her so beautiful. Even with the lumpy pink scars on one side of her face, it didn’t make her any less attractive. She didn’t chide me for staring, and she looked me directly in the eyes like I was her equal when she spoke to me, even though I was a child and no other adult did that.
She dragged me away from Ursai and Midori.
“We were going to dip our feet in the water,” I said.
This would have been more believable had the grunting not started up again. I knew I was going to get in trouble for running off.
Faith’s face flushed even redder. “You are a little liar and a sneak. You should be ashamed of yourself, spying
on them like that.”
“Why?” I knew the older children talked about spying on Ursai and Midori, only now I knew what it was they found so fascinating. Even if Shipo didn’t like watching, it didn’t mean I couldn’t find it interesting.
“You are a young lady of quality and young ladies who are sisters to the leader of their tribe don’t do such things. I might have expected this from Shipo, but not from you. I’m so disappointed in you, Sumiko. Just wait until I tell your brother. He’ll box your ears for this.” She muttered many gaijin words in her native tongue.
Usually I laughed when I heard the funny words she said, but today I hung my head in shame. I wasn’t exactly sure why I should feel bad for spying. I knew I should have felt bad for playing instead of working. Mostly I was sad I had disappointed an adult, my brother’s wife, no less. It wasn’t only in skin and hair color that Faith differed from my people. Her customs often baffled me. I wanted to please her and be good for her, but I didn’t understand what I must do. With my own parents, everything had been so much easier. It was times like this I missed them even more.
When Taishi came back from hunting, Faith told Taishi what I’d done. She used her language, her voice growing high and sharp.
Taishi doubled over, laughing. He called out to Ursai in Jomon. “You’d better find a better spot to make love to your wife if you don’t want the children finding you.”
Ursai chuckled, but his face turned red. It was hard not to smile along with my brother. His laughter had always been contagious.
Faith’s glare made me forget what I’d been smiling about. She said more of her language to Taishi. I understood the word “you” and “don’t” and “sister.” I was still learning the off-worlder tongue. My brother said it was useful for speaking to traders, but I’d never seen him speak to traders. He always investigated with Ursai if he saw one of their ships land in case they were enemies. I only saw him use the gaijin tongue with Faith to keep their secrets.
