Above the East China Sea

by Sarah Bird

  “With their money, I hired laborers and rebuilt our house exactly as it had been. That is when I made a most astonishing discovery and one that will make you very happy, little sister. When we dug up the old sweet potato field in order to replant it, you will never guess what we found. The hōanden made of hinoki wood to contain the emperor’s photo that we had always been forbidden to gaze upon.

  “I decided that I would look upon the face of the man for whom such unimaginable suffering had been endured. Though my brain had long been free of the delusion that he was a god, my hand still trembled as it touched the brass handle on the front of the wooden display case. I held my breath and opened the small door on the front. A stupid prickle of fear ran through me that the goddess Amaterasu might yet strike me dead for the sacrilege of beholding the image of her descendant.

  “Tamiko, I don’t know what fearsome lord I thought I would find there, but I didn’t expect to see the photo of a small man with weak eyes, a weak, petulant mouth, and ears that poked out like the handles on a jug. A man whose shoulders sagged beneath the weight of all the medals, and badges, sashes, braids, and epaulettes pinned to his uniform. Resting on the table next to him was his hat with what appeared to be a feather duster implanted at its front. He looked like a boy playing soldier. Before the weight of all that had been taken from me by this silly man with his feather-duster hat could crush me with treads heavier than those of any tank, I made my wondrous discovery, the one that will please you.

  “Next to the emperor’s photo that Father, loyal to the end, had sought to protect was the list he’d begun reading that day of all the students in Madadayo who had been admitted to high school. And guess what, Tami-chan? Your name was on that list! The expression we saw on Father’s face that morning at breakfast that we took to be disappointment at your rejection was preoccupation; he was consumed with thoughts of the coming war. Tamiko, your name was on the list. You were always a real Princess Lily girl.”

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  After cousin Mitsue had watched the ambulance carrying Hatsuko make its blaring, halting way through the crowd of stumbling drunks, then turn down the first open street and speed away, the wail of its siren warbling like an angry cat, she had rejoiced: It was time to put the plan they had so carefully worked out into action. Today, after more than seventy years, she would finally repay her cousin Hatsuko in full not only for saving her from starvation after the war, but, even more generously, for forgiving her cursed betrayal with Nakamura.

  With an authority she’d never accessed before during her long life, Mitsue had ordered Hideo to take her to the hospital; his wife could meet the girls after the parade and wait with them for him to return. Mitsue impressed upon him that his first obligation was to his great-aunt. Hideo had then gestured to the crowd pressing in on them and told Mitsue that her request was impossible; he couldn’t possibly leave his family. In answer, Mitsue merely smiled and observed how surprising she found it that he would risk endangering himself and his family by failing to honor someone so close to joining the spirit world.

  Overhearing this threat, Saori had hectored her husband. “You have to go. All the Kokuba women are known to be very spiritual. Priestesses, healers, shamans.”

  “So what?”

  “So, they have the ear of the kami. We’re already dealing with so much. Your setbacks at work. Your headaches. My dizzy spells. Which, by the way, are getting worse. My head is whirling even now. And don’t forget the girls’ school problems.”

  Though Hideo had scoffed, “I’m certain that the kami aren’t responsible for our daughters’ poor performance in algebra,” he knew that his wife was right. Given what superior students he and Saori both had been, there could be no explanation other than interference from the next world for their daughters’ embarrassing marks. Or for his failure to get the regional manager position that had gone to that idiot Ota last month. Another humiliation. Massaging his temples, Hideo surrendered once again to the conspiracy of women plaguing his existence. He told Saori that he would meet her and the girls back at the parking lot after he dropped the old lady off.

  On the drive to the hospital, while Hideo fumes and mutters about not getting any of the footage he’d wanted, Mitsue ignores him and meditates in preparation for the fulfillment of her life’s most important task. First she has to order her memories. She sorts back through and smooths them over until they form a single stream that flows into this fateful moment.

  She starts when Hatsuko found her at the Americans’ camp in the far north end of the island, took her in, shared all she had, and never once said a single harsh word about her betrayal. Hatsuko had been changed, and she showed the same generosity to dozens of others. Distant relatives. Former residents of Madadayo. Orphans no one else claimed. She welcomed them all and, sharing her family’s land, and the Americans’ money, they rebuilt the village and their lives. Once the starving years ended, Mitsue had time to realize that her cousin’s forgiveness had come too quickly; she hadn’t truly atoned for her sin. It was clear to Mitsue that unless she properly discharged this debt, she would be denied entry to the next world. Therefore, shortly after the Day of Shame, September 8, 1951, when Japan signed the peace treaty that sacrificed one-fifth of Okinawa to the U.S. military, she journeyed to Sefa-utaki to seek true absolution.

  At the entrance to the island’s most sacred grove, she climbed the steep, slippery steps upward into the dripping green velvet that cloaked the mystery within. Her head bowed and senses alive with the palpable presence of the kami humming in the silence about her, Mitsue had entered that hushed and hallowed spot where the noro priestesses, once the island’s undisputed spiritual leaders, had received their powers. Where for centuries the only men allowed to enter were the ancient kings of the Ryukyuan islands, who left hundreds of horses and thousands of servants waiting when they ascended these very steps to beg the kami to bless their reigns.

  Pausing in the path trodden by high priestesses and princesses, Mitsue knelt beside a bomb crater that vine and fern had not yet healed. She brushed her fingertips across the wound and was greeted by the dead who gathered there. After honoring them with an offering of a papaya and three American pennies, she continued on her way. At the top of the stairs, she beheld the sacred cleft created by two immense slabs of rock leaning together. Sefa-utaki was a reverse canyon wedged into the side of the black cliff, open to the blue sky above the sea at its far end. Hundreds had gathered beneath its triangle of safety when the Typhoon of Steel raged outside and there they had begged the kami to save them. Mitsue dipped her hands into the jugs placed beneath the twin stalactites, Amadayuru Ashikanubi and Shikiyodayuru Amaganubi, that stood sentry beside the opening, and wet them in the drops of heaven’s rain that collected there.

  Her dripping hands steepled into a form that matched the angle of the rock slabs, Mitsue entered the holy space the slabs formed. At the altar of Chonuhana, she knelt and gazed to the east. With the cathedral of stone framing the fabled ocean view, Mitsue beheld Kudaka Island, floating like a mirage on the horizon between sea and sky. She sent prayers to the goddess Amamikyu, who had created the first Ryukyuans on that holy island where all women from the ages of thirty-one to seventy still served the gods. Mitsue clapped her hands to fully capture the kami’s attention and told her story.

  “I wronged my cousin grievously by having sex with the man she loved. Nakamura pursued me and, though at first I scorned him, gradually I came to depend upon his attention. Then to crave it. The times we were together in secret when he whispered to me of how I inflamed his desire and he touched me with a gentleness I had all but forgotten were the only moments when I was not tortured by fear and despair and loneliness. The other girls, Hatsuko and the rest, had never known a man’s caress. But I had. I knew what I had lost, and for a few blessed moments I could pretend Masaru hadn’t died and we were together again. I didn’t think it mattered, since I was certain we would all perish on the march to Makabe. I had no feelings for Nakamura.
And he had none for me. His love for himself was so great that it left no room for any other. In fact, his self-regard was what gave the lieutenant the confidence to approach me when no one else dared. All the other soldiers were too intimidated by—and I only say this to present the truth—my beauty.”

  Even as the kami guided Mitsue to utter the word “beauty,” she understood the penance they desired of her before they would grant absolution. And from that day forward, Mitsue put her great beauty on the shelf like a garment she had outgrown and had no further use for. She stopped wearing a hat and her skin turned dark as old tea. She no longer smiled in a way that dented her cheeks with the dimples of good fortune that men found so fetching. She threw away her Kissupurufu lipstick. Somehow all these outward measures dimmed Mitsue’s radiance enough that, for the first time in her memory, heads did not automatically turn toward her like flowers seeking the light. Though she missed being admired by men, Mitsue found it a small enough price to pay to honor her cousin’s magnanimity.

  Over the years, more and more surviving relatives and residents of Madadayo or their descendants returned to their village. Hatsuko continued to welcome them all. Even her father’s once-grand relatives wormed their way in, though they were worthless at anything other than calligraphy and numbers. Still, with Hatsuko guiding them, they rebuilt Madadayo just as it had been on the day before the sea had gone gray with warships. Mitsue devoted her life to helping Hatsuko prepare for her sister’s return, which, as time passed, they both came to understand would have to be as a spirit.

  Working side by side every day for years, then decades, Hatsuko and Mitsue grew as close as a pair of Mandarin ducks, one never going anywhere without the other, until the stroke that the scheming Hideo had used as a pretext to shuffle Hatsuko off to that unbearable nursing home. Though Mitsue tried to convince her old friend to return to Madadayo with her, Hatsuko knew that she could no longer care for herself. Besides, with the minutes lasting for an eternity and the days, weeks, and months disappearing in two blinks, it wasn’t worth the trouble while she lived. No, it was what was to happen to her after she died that concerned Hatsuko. And on that score, she left very clear, very insistent instructions with her cousin. Instructions that Mitsue was now determined to carry out. If only the toad Hideo could get them to the hospital in time.

  “This is impossible,” Hideo spits out when he finds that the hospital lot is already crammed full not just with parked cars, but with vehicles slowly orbiting in search of a space to snap up. “I’ll never get a spot.”

  “Don’t worry, Hideo-san,” Mitsue suggests, making her voice the birdlike chirp of supplication that weak men like him so enjoy. “You can just let me out, and I’ll go by myself.”

  Hideo doesn’t even make a pretense of objecting. Happy to be relieved of his burden, he pulls up beneath the portico leading into the emergency room, and asks in a perfunctory way, “You have my number?”

  “Oh, yes, yes,” Mitsue hastens to answer.

  “Call if there’s a problem. Tell dear Hatsuko that I did everything I possibly could to come visit. Make sure she knows that.”

  “Don’t worry,” Mitsue assures him. “Your great-aunt won’t go to the next world bearing you any hard feelings for not looking after her tonight.”

  He nods and Mitsue hides a smile, thinking of all the other offenses that Hideo has committed before this night that Hatsuko will most certainly recall when accounts are taken.

  “I must get back and pick up my family.”

  “Oh, yes, yes, of course, your family,” Mitsue chimes in a soothing way that disguises the contempt she feels for this silly man’s puny, isolated idea of what a family is.

  “We’ll return for you and my aunt as soon as we can.”

  “Please take your time. We’ll be fine.” Mitsue must hide how delighted she is to be rid of the unpleasant little man; what she must do this night will be so much easier without him. Right before alighting from the van, Mitsue turns to Hideo and says with as much cheerful innocence as she can pretend, “Just two old ladies in a hospital. What could be safer?”

  Hideo gives a grunt of something approximating agreement, Mitsue gets out, slides the van door shut, and he drives off without so much as a glance back.

  Mitsue’s tread is brisk and determined as she marches into the hospital. She asks the attendant on duty to direct her to Kokuba Hatsuko. As she makes her way through the crowded waiting room, her lips stretch into a smile so wide that her dimples make a rare appearance.

  FIFTY-NINE

  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 se
e 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.