by Sarah Bird
I screamed and the machete clattered to the bed of the cart.
“Stop screaming,” Aunt Junko ordered. “It’s only us.” My mother and her sisters, all of them, oldest to youngest—Junko, my mother, Yasu, Toyo, Sueko, Yoshi—stepped out of the shadows.
In front of them all stood my impetuous cousin, Junko’s daughter, Chiiko, who told her aunts, “Yes, be quiet. We certainly wouldn’t want to wake up your brother.”
All the women laughed at Chiiko’s sarcastic comment. The women had long ago agreed that the decision to adopt my father into their family had been a terrible mistake that only laughter could allow them to bear.
“Wake our brother?” Aunt Junko asked. “After all the millet brandy he drank? Nothing will wake him.”
When my mother joined in the laughter, the deep cut from my father’s lash that sliced beneath her high cheek like a dark shadow seemed to lighten a bit. Even Little Mouse, tied to her mother’s back, peeked over Chiiko’s shoulder and grinned. Little Mouse’s baby teeth had come in, and, just like her mother and grandmother, Chiiko and Junko, she had a gap between the front two. Our father always said that it was that space that allowed all the foolish words in the women’s foolish heads to tumble out. Father warned Hatsuko and me that blurting out whatever thought crossed your mind was a very Okinawan trait and we must strive to keep our thoughts and especially our feelings to ourselves in the refined Japanese manner.
“Let’s get this cart unloaded,” Aunt Yoshi ordered. Though she was the youngest of the sisters, she was the tallest and the strongest, since she’d been the baby adored by her siblings, who regularly went hungry so that she would have extra treats to help her grow strong and healthy. They also never allowed her to carry heavy loads on her head, as they did, which caused her to grow taller than the others. Aunt Yoshi was the mother of my twin cousins, Shinsei and Uei. Since everyone knows that multiple births are a sure sign of a shamefully animal nature, it was generally agreed that all the spoiling was the reason.
“What are you doing?” I asked, as my aunts and cousin carried off the chicken coops and crocks of pork miso.
“We are undoing what should never have been done in the first place,” Mother answered firmly, untying the goats and leading them away from the cart.
“Those are for the emperor,” I protested. My mother caught Aunt Junko’s eye and all the sisters laughed, their merriment an enchanted piping in the still night.
My anmā and her sisters carried the cart’s contents to the narrow footpath that led into the dense growth of the jungle.
“Where are you taking the emperor’s gifts?” I called after them, but they’d already been swallowed up by the night. I jumped down off the cart. Papaya was slewing her head to the side as she yanked off a wad of weeds, then calmly chewed. Confident that she wouldn’t wander away until every blade had been consumed, I left the empty cart and ran down the footpath.
The narrow, twisting path cut through the sacred grove thick with tall red pines that smelled of resin. The path led to the tomb of my mother’s clan, where we gathered several times a year. Especially at Shiimii and Obon, my mother and her sisters would spend days weeding the family plot and cleaning the tomb. Then they would produce a multitude of square lacquered boxes filled with rice cakes, wafers, seaweed rolls, boiled octopus, and potato pudding for us to share with our ancestors. There were no lacquered boxes that night.
At the end of the path, I found them gathered in front of our family tomb. The tomb was the pride of the Kokuba family. It had a granite roof high as a man’s shoulder. Some said that such tombs resembled a turtle’s back. But Anmā laughed at that, saying only one thing had such a voluptuous curve: a woman’s womb. It was where all life started and, in the form of this tomb, where it would return.
Because there’d been a bone-washing ceremony just a few days ago, the large squared-off stone that usually blocked the entrance had already been pushed aside. Working as they always did, like a jolly colony of ants that liked to sing and make bawdy comments, my mother and her five sisters carried the crocks of food they’d taken from the oxcart into the tomb.
The millet-seed oil lamp was lit, and the tomb glowed with its soft illumination. Our tomb was one of the largest on the island, with rows of shelves for holding ceramic urns arranged in chronological order, containing the bones of generations of family members. It did not smell of rotting flesh as so many did, since all my female relatives were careful about cleaning the bones before they were stored in here. They understood that all the rituals had to be observed perfectly or the dead would never complete their transformation into ancestral spirits.
When the last crock had been stored away, and the goats and chickens distributed among her sisters to hide on their farms out of Father’s sight, Mother took a handful of rice from one of the bags, clapped her hands together to catch the attention of the kami, and prayed. “Dear ancestors, today the Americans have begun destroying our island. Please guard your many descendants that we may live to honor you. And protect this food that we leave in your safekeeping, so that when my proud husband and foolish daughters are starving after Japan has been defeated, they will have food.”
“Mother! You can’t speak that way. Remember what happened to Ashitomi-sensei?”
“Of course I remember one of our few Okinawan teachers and how those Japanese soldiers took him out and beat him like a common criminal for stating the truth: that Okinawa is nothing to Japan. A shield, at best.”
Even in this dark and deserted spot, I glanced around. If anyone overheard her, my mother, and probably me as well, would be shot on the spot as a traitor. “Mother! What treason you speak. What insults to all the brave soldiers who have come here ready to sacrifice their lives in our defense.”
Aunt Junko and Cousin Chiiko hooted the raucous laughs they were famous for. “Ready to eat every kin of our rice,” Chiiko said, “steal every chicken, drink every drop of millet brandy, and put babies in every pretty girl they come across.”
Though all my aunts laughed, my mother was deadly serious when she stared hard at me and said, “Listen now to your anmā, Tamiko, for only I will tell you the truth. Ashitomi-sensei was right: The Japanese don’t care about us. They will sacrifice every person on all the Ryukyu Islands down to the last child to protect their sacred motherland. And when they are defeated, it will be even worse.”
My heart stopped; if a spy overheard such a treasonous remark, we would all be beheaded. “Defeated? Anmā, what a silly joke you are making. Why, everyone knows that in all its glorious history, Japan has never been conquered. And she never will be as long as her subjects remain loyal to our father, the emperor.”
“Tamiko, there is no more time to pretend. Though we never wanted it, have nothing to gain by it, and did nothing to provoke it, Japan has brought a great and terrible war to our people, and we shall be crushed by the Amerikās.”
“Our sister is right,” Aunt Junko said, cousin Chiiko and the others nodding their heads in sad acknowledgment. Even sweet Little Mouse, the happy baby grown into a happy toddler, looked on wide-eyed and somber.
“No!” I protested. “For more than a thousand years Japan has—”
“Daughter, listen. We will be conquered. I know this from your aunt Toyo’s husband, Uncle Chūzō, who worked all those years in the sugar plantations on Hawaii. He has told me that the generals did a very stupid thing when they attacked Pearl Harbor. They awoke a sleeping dragon.”
“But size does not matter,” I argued. “It is spirit. The pure Japanese spirit will always prevail. Japan has already destroyed the enemy’s navy at Pearl Harbor and defeated them in the Philippines and Corregidor and Singapore and …” I tried to remember the names of the other sites of Japanese victory.
“You speak like a rabbit. Perhaps the rabbit, cornered by an ox, can hop about for a bit, dash between the giant beast’s hooves. But eventually? The foolish rabbit will be crushed.”
Doubt squeezed my heart then, and did not
release its hold until I glanced down at my mother’s feet. As usual, they were bare, and her toes, spreading out as wide as a stretched hand, were leathery and brown as an ape’s. It was just as the school inspector visiting from Tokyo had told our principal, when he saw how many of us were barefooted. The inspector in his brown suit, hair neatly parted and gleaming with pomade, had asked then, “We do the best we can, but really? What can you expect from these little brown monkeys?”
Little brown monkey. That was exactly what my mother was.
And still she chattered on, seeming more like a little brown monkey with every word. “My great-great-grandmother Uto, who was called Old Jug, and drowned in the Great Typhoon of 1872 and has always taken an interest in our family, spoke to me soon after Third Brother left. She told me that he would never return. That none of my sons would return. That they would die from the sun spinning too close to earth—”
“See?” I interrupted, unable to contain myself at such ignorance. “This is why I must ignore you. This is why I must go to Shuri and become educated and worthy to serve our emperor. You don’t even know that the planets rotate around the sun. You can’t even read. You can’t appreciate all that Japan has done for us because you’re too ignorant.”
My mother slapped me hard across the face. “You will never speak to me like that again. I am your mother. You will respect me in this life and honor me in the next as you honor all of your ancestors, or we will punish you with sorrow and misfortune in this life and in the next.”
My aunts and cousin Chiiko sucked in stunned breaths; never before had they heard such a terrible threat spoken aloud.
“And now, baka”—Anmā spit out the word “fool,” and went on—“you will listen like a good daughter with your eyes lowered and your mouth closed. Here. Take this.” She shoved a tube made of fabric at me. It was stuffed with more money than I had ever seen in my life.
“Tie that around your waist beneath your kimono.”
I did as I was told.
“Do not ever allow yourself to be parted from that money. My mother gave it to me in secret so that I would never have to stay with any man who was unkind to me. I should have used it long ago and left your father, but now that you need it, I am happy I didn’t.” Next Anmā placed a bonnet on my head and tied it tightly beneath my chin. It was quilted with thick wads of cotton padding and extended down until it covered my shoulders. “This will protect you when the bombs fall.” She shoved another into my hand and told me it was for Hatsuko, and that I must always tie my older sister’s bonnet on before my own.
“Most important of all,” Mother said, leaning in close and holding up a thick document. “Remember that this is here.”
“Why have you brought our family’s koseki shōhon here?” I asked when she held up the certificate that she’d gone to great trouble to register in Tokyo. It documented our lineage and proved that this land belonged to our family. We all thought she was stupid to have gone to the bother and expense of proving something that everyone already knew to be a fact. “Why isn’t this in the house?” I asked. “Safe in our butsudan?”
Anmā shook her head, as if my question about our family altar were a pesky fly. “Safe in a house of wood with a roof of palm thatch? Only stones will be safe when the bombs fall. Here.” She shoved my leather rucksack, which the Japanese principal had insisted all students must have, into my hands. “I have packed dried kelp, roasted soy beans, and dried bonito for your journey.”
“Anmā, where are you sending me?” I asked. My lip trembled and tears gathered in my eyes. “To Aguni Island to work for Great-Uncle Eikichi?” I thought of the island that no one spoke of because the inhabitants of Aguni made their living slaughtering animals. Already my aunts had sent three of my rowdiest boy cousins to that desolate place. They’d returned chastened, with moons of dried blood beneath their nails, their arms flecked with white scars from the knives, and tales of being driven like beasts of burden by our cruel uncle. “Mother, please, don’t send me to Uncle Eikichi.”
“I’m not sending you to Aguni Island, baka. You will go to Shuri.”
I was too surprised to speak.
“Your sister is a goose. A lovely, refined goose, but with no more sense than a goose. She is like your father. Ready to die for beautiful words that have no truth. Though you aren’t happy about it, you are like me. Your feet are wide and rooted to the earth. Your sister’s head is filled with airy thoughts that will make her float away. You will go to Shuri and keep her alive. Do you understand me?”
My smart, worldly big sister, I was to be her caretaker? Me? Little Guppy?
My mother grabbed my arms and shook me. “Do you understand me?”
I nodded, feeling as I did when I rolled down the long, steep hill above the Oigama River. The world was topsy-turvy.
“Pay attention and mind this well: From now on your life doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to me and to your father and our mothers and fathers. Because even though we may all be killed, we will go on living through you. You and your sister have our blood. It is your duty to take care of it and to live as long as you can. Nuchi du takara. Life is the treasure. Do you understand?”
I nodded.
“Say it,” she ordered me. “Nuchi du takara.”
My tongue fumbled over the words. “Nuchi du takara. Life is the treasure.”
“Nuchi du takara.” All the women folded their hands and repeated my mother’s words like a chant. Cousin Chiiko clapped her hands several times to call the kami-sama’s attention to their prayer, then excused herself; she’d left her two older children asleep with no one watching over them, since her husband had been drafted and sent to Manchukuo to fight the imperialist oppressors there. Plus, hers was the only home with a stable free for Papaya, so she’d have to deal with the balky ox. With Little Mouse fast asleep, lolling on her back, she hurried away.
Anmā went on. “When you need help, when you need guidance, pray to our ancestors. Especially Old Jug. Ask for her guidance. She will help you. Do you understand?”
I nodded. Anmā stared for a long time into my face, then clapped my upper arms with her open hands, and commanded in a thick voice, “Good. Go.”
The moon had set and the forest was lost in darkness by the time my mother pushed me off, down the path. I stumbled away from the tomb, then paused and looked back. Mother yelled angrily for me to stop dawdling. As I walked away, she shrank, becoming a pale moth in her summer kimono until the black night swallowed her up entirely. When I reached our village road, Chiiko was there leading Papaya away.
“Travel safely, First Daughter,” she called back to me. First Daughter was her name for me, since she’d carried me on her back when I was a baby, long before her own children were born.
“Good-bye, Second Mother.”
The sun was beginning to rise as I reached the first bend in the road and glanced back to catch a final glimpse of my cousin and her baby. Little Mouse had awoken and managed to squirm around in the sling binding her to Chiiko’s back, so that she was staring at me. I wondered whether Little Mouse would call me Second Mother one day, since I used to carry her on my back. The first rays of the new day slanted into her face and I waved. Though the toddler’s arms were free and I had been the one to teach her how to flap her hand downward in farewell, Mouse did not return my wave. This made me sad, for it seemed my first daughter was withholding her blessing from me and my mission. I kept waving in vain until Little Mouse and Chiiko disappeared in the distance. A bubble of love for my cousin and her child rose up and filled my chest so full that it hurt, and I almost turned away from Shuri and ran back to them. Back to Madadayo.
But I forced myself to draw on my true Japanese spirit of sacrifice and persevere. Back on the path, I sensed the presence of uneasy spirits hovering around who had not received a proper burial, and wished that I were traveling to Shuri in a cart loaded with a hero’s bounty of gifts for the emperor. Mouse’s sad face haunted me. I began to think that the kami
were sending me a warning, as they often do through toddlers not yet able to speak, and once again I was tempted to turn back. But the prospect of serving the emperor by Hatsuko’s side was so exciting that I pushed on.
By the time I reached the main road, the sun was shining full in my face, and my heart was light again as I set off for Shuri.
EIGHTEEN
At Kadena’s front gate, the guard, a young Okinawan woman in the short-sleeved khaki uniform of a host nation civilian employee, asks for our IDs. From my shoulder bag, I dig out the card that all dependents are issued at the age of ten. Codie and I used to talk about how we dreaded the day when we turned twenty-one and would have to surrender them.
By the time Codie was twelve, she hated the goofy photo on her card so much that she “lost” it so she could get a new one. Always Luz the Caboose, following my sister and copying everything she did, I “lost” the brand-new card I’d gotten when I turned ten. Before we went in for new ones, Codie spent a lot of time making us up. Eyeliner, mascara, blush, lip gloss. Her breath on my face as she told me to look up so she could put mascara on my bottom lashes smelled like Sucrets from the lozenges she was sucking that day for a sore throat. We thought we looked stupendous. The photos, however, taken by a bored GI under flickering fluorescent lights, were worse than the first ones.
“Oh. My. God,” Codie said when we got our cards, still warm from the laminator. “We look like Jodie Foster in that old movie where she’s a ho. We’re baby hos.”
The IDs became another secret in-joke between us. Mom, however, was not amused. She ordered us to redo them. Codie promised we would. ASAP. But we never did. We loved being baby hos together. Plus, we both considered our mother a giant hypocrite, because she was such a ho herself, and only transformed herself into the perfect, by-the-book soldier girl for work.
Eventually Mom confiscated the baby-ho IDs, torched them into a dripping mass of molten plastic with her lighter, and took us herself to get replacements. This time the only makeup we were allowed was ChapStick, and the photos were taken by an airman terrified of screwing up in front of a superior. I’m actuallly rolling my eyes in my ID photo.
