Above the East China Sea: A novel

by Sarah Bird

  I’m disappointed that the letter is all in Japanese characters—until a photo falls out. The date stamped in red across the bottom shows that it was taken at the beginning of the summer, the day before the letter was delivered. The color photo appears to have been shot with a very long telephoto lens on a gray and cloudy day somewhere in a dingy urban landscape. Possibly Chicago, I’m guessing from the small segment of an elevated rail line visible between the two buildings that dominate the image. The subject of the photo obviously didn’t know he was being surveilled. He looks like he’s in his sixties, Latino, or maybe a really light-skinned black.

  For a second, I think I recognize the guy. Then I realize that I don’t know him at all. He’s just some anonymous, old street-corner guy, slouching against the side of a building, looking warily off to the side, studying the street with a tense, alert expression on his face. Above his head is part of a sign that reads, “apLand.” The one thing that’s not dreary and monotone in the photo is a patch of sidewalk at the guy’s feet, which is covered by some sort of red fluff, as if a parade had just passed by and one of the floats had exploded.

  Though he’s only a guy standing on some random, big-city street corner, and there’s no way I could possibly know him, I still can’t entirely shake the feeling that there’s something familiar about him. My mom trailed a lot of men through our lives, mine and Codie’s, but this one is too old to be one of her hookups. She doesn’t demand much, but she does require buff. And nearly always young.

  I try but can’t see any connection between the letter written in Japanese from what were supposed to be my Okinawan relatives and an old street-corner dude in Chicago. I finally have to conclude that the photo must be from an investigation my mom was involved in and she just randomly stuffed it in the envelope the letter came in. Who knows how many stakeouts she’s been on? She certainly never would have told me about them. Probably she’s secretly in OSI and has trunks full of surveillance shots, including ones of me stealing prescription meds.

  I’m about to wad up the tissuey letter when I notice one word written in English on the envelope in my mom’s handwriting: “yuta.” I say it out loud and realize that that is what Jake was talking about, not the Mormon state. A phone number is carefully written next to “yuta,” and underlined several times. A time, 1500, and a date the day after she received the letter follow. Why would my mother make an appointment with this “yuta”? Is there a connection between that and the photo? A strange sense of urgency overcomes me, as if I were intended to find the photo and the envelope. As if, like the sea turtle, they might be signs from Codie. Signs that I have no idea how to interpret. I’m so clueless that I feel like I’m trapped in a video game called “Okinawa,” where I don’t know the rules, but the person I love most will be hurt if I can’t figure them out and act according to their logic.

  Or I’m buzzed on bath salts.

  Or I’m deranged.

  The possibilities are limited.

  The wreckage of the sergeant’s room, all the tidy sock balls lying unspooled, the starched uniforms crumpled in a heap, the decapitated hat-shaper, rocking on the floor, certainly votes for deranged. Suicidally, death-wish deranged. My heart thumps and my guts twist from needing the confiscated baggie of calming pharmaceuticals. The psycho-killer eeks ring out, startling me so bad that I let out a little shriek. I shove the photo and envelope with the number written on it into my pocket, and the stolen pin jabs me. I grab the phone, ready to hit “decline.” I cannot hang up on my mom fast enough. But it’s not her. I answer.

  “LOOZER! Get your ass over here, Lulu. ASAP. We’re going in.”

  “Kirby, what—”

  “Quit being a little bitch and come out and party with us.” He lowers his voice. “Luz, seriously, come; Jacey won’t go with us if you don’t come.”

  “Go where?” I ask.

  “Murder House.”

  “That place you keep talking about? And every time you bring it up, Jake freaks out and won’t let you take us?”

  “ ‘Let’ me? Luz, that guy is not my CO. And he’s straight-up cray about all this Oki stuff. Besides, he left. Not that it was ever his call anyway.”

  “He left?”

  He raises his voice to its typical bray. “Yeah, got his kimono all up in a bunch when I told him where we were going and that it wasn’t up for debate. You coming?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Kirby whispers again, “Luz, please come, okay? For me? If you don’t come, Jacey won’t go.”

  In the background, Jacey asks, “Kirbs, is she coming? ’Cuz I’m not gonna go without my best friend.”

  Best friend? Jacey Bosfeld just called me her best friend? This throws me for a loop, since she’s never even been to my house and I’ve never been to hers. Best friend. I can’t think of what to say. Codie was always the only best friend I ever had. The only one I needed.

  “You talk to her,” Kirby says, his voice fading out as he hands the phone off.

  “Are you in?” Jacey asks. Her voice sounds different—louder, clearer—like she’d been talking to me through a window before and has stepped inside to where I am. Before I can answer, she whispers, “You should have seen it, Luz. Jake totally went off on Kirby. For once, though, Kirby didn’t back off.” She lowers her voice even more. “Wanna know why?”

  “Why?”

  “Me. Because I said I wanted to go. I think he’s into me.”

  “ ‘Think’? Jace, he’s been crushed out on you all summer.” Having a normal girl conversation feels like speaking in a language that I haven’t used in a long time, but one that comes back with no effort.

  “Really?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “Hey, what’s the deal with you and Jake?”

  “No deal. Flirting while his girlfriend is away, I guess. Why, did he say something?”

  “Like he needs to? With the way he looks at you?”

  “What ‘way’? There’s no ‘way.’ So he’s not there now?”

  “God, no. He was really pissed about Kirby taking us to Murder House.”

  “Why?”

  “You know. His usual Oki stuff. He says it’s this big desecration to go in there.”

  “The house?”

  “Yeah. It was supposedly built on some ancient Oki family’s tomb.”

  “And that’s why it’s haunted?”

  “I guess. I tune him out when he goes off like that.”

  “So you don’t remember any of what he said?”

  “I don’t know. Something about Murder House being all sacred and everything.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Oh, wait. Now I remember. It’s where the dead wait to make contact with the living and steal their souls.”

  Grabbing my shoulder bag, I stand, and as I walk to the door, say, “I’ll be right there.”

  NINETEEN

  Anmā! Anmā! Who is that? The warrior on the horse.

  He is a palace guard who died defending our last great king, Shō Tai. And the beautiful woman washing her long hair is his third wife. I don’t know who the pale Amerikā crying in the corner is.

  Can they see us?

  No, they aren’t kami either. They are the displaced, not kami, not living, waiting here like us.

  For the girl who came to the cave?

  Perhaps.

  But she is ours. Didn’t the kami send her to us?

  No more questions. If I answer all of them, there won’t be time to tell you the story. You do want to be with our clan when you enter into the other realm, don’t you?

  Yes.

  All right then. Where was I?

  You were sad because Little Mouse didn’t wave good-bye to you, but then the sun came up and—

  Yes, yes, the sun came up and I was on the road to Shuri to be with my sister.

  Because the Imperial Army had seized control of the railroad, I had to walk all day to reach Naha. Though we had heard that the city had been bombed a year ago, all
the reports had downplayed the damage, and I was not prepared for the devastation. Where once there had been trolley lines and fine restaurants, exclusive hotels and tree-lined boulevards, only piles of jagged cement and burned timbers remained. I made my way out of the ravaged city to the ancient capital of Shuri, home of the Okinawan kings that my father’s family had once served as hereditary samurai. Fortunately, Shuri and its castle were far enough from Naha that they remained untouched. The royal palace sat atop a hill like a potentate elevated above the subjects who knelt at his feet. I comforted myself with the knowledge that the Imperial Japanese Army had located their headquarters in our capital and had dispatched two of their finest generals, Ushijima and Chō, to command it.

  I went straight to Himeyuri High School to find Hatsuko and discovered that the Imperial Army had claimed most of the school. I told the Japanese guard at the gate that I’d come to see my sister. He said only soldiers and Princess Lily girls could be admitted, and that all students were off taking nursing classes at headquarters. I asked where headquarters was. The guard gave me a fierce look and demanded, “Are you a spy?” He raised his rifle until the bayonet pointed straight at my heart. “You speak Japanese like a spy.”

  I thought of all the Okinawans who had been whipped, imprisoned, or beheaded by suspicious soldiers for speaking our dialect, and, my heart hammering in my chest, I turned and fled into the crowd. I ran for several blocks, expecting at any moment to be shot in the back.

  When I was safely out of range, I took refuge in an alley and caught my breath. Huge army trucks rumbled past. The asphalt streets were already cracked and rutted from their weight. Japanese soldiers in khaki were everywhere. A rickshaw passed carrying a stern army officer with the high black collar of his olive green tunic buttoned tight beneath his chin. His black leather boots came all the way up to the knees of his jodhpurs. The officer had removed his sword from its scabbard and thrust it between his feet. The barefoot driver wore a long vest that slapped at his pumping legs, and a conical straw hat that bounced on his head as he ran.

  Other high-ranking officers with fierce scowls rode past enthroned in the sidecars of motorcycles. In spite of my fright, I marveled at all the evidence that my little island had been transformed into the mightiest fortress in all the Pacific. Still, with no official papers, or letter of acceptance into Himeyuri, I was worried about being taken again for a spy. So, as night descended, I climbed the wide stone stairway that led out of Shuri to the one place where I felt secure: the great castle at the top. Even when the Japanese forbade teaching the history of the Ryukyu Islands, Mother had made sure that her children knew that Shuri Castle was the heart of our country. Besides being the capital, where our kings had once ruled, the castle held the long history of the Ryukyu Islands, the chronology of all the kings, chronicles of battles fought, and, most important, Anmā always emphasized, all the property records throughout the islands. She was proud that, while Shuri Castle was not quite as old as the Roman Coliseum, our ancestors had created this structure centuries before the Cathedral at Notre Dame was even started.

  Though I was upset at not finding Hatsuko, and by having a bayonet pointed at me, a sense of ease suffused me when I reached the forty-foot-high wall that encircled the royal palace and its grounds. The wall had stood for five centuries. Even the imperialist aggressor Commodore Perry, whom our king had insulted so grievously, had not attempted a serious invasion. I knew then that what we Okinawans always said was true: “As long as Shuri holds, our kingdom will hold.” I passed beneath the grand gate inscribed with the Chinese characters meaning “Land of Peace” and entered the safety of the enchanted world within.

  The castle painted in gold and vermilion could have been plucked from a fairy tale. It was just as I remembered it from my childhood visits with Mother. The tips of the castle’s vast tiled roof swept up at the edges like the horns of a water buffalo. Carved stone dragon heads spouted cool water from underground springs. Gardens and shaded forest walks sprawled out beyond the vast courtyard, suffusing the air with the tender scent of lilies.

  Out of sight of the castle keepers who were shutting the gates for the night, I slipped unnoticed into the woods, where I imagined generations of kings and queens strolling down the same cobbled path I followed. It crossed over the high arch of a bridge above a pond where fat red and gold koi fish from Japan undulated through the water. The path ended at the base of an ancient banyan tree so large a thousand men could have cooled in its shade. I spread my furoshiki wrapping cloth on the ground beneath its latticework of aerial roots and sat down to rest. Overcome by exhaustion, I dropped immediately into a deep sleep filled with dreams of feudal princes and princesses.

  Early the next morning, I awoke to the sounds of a squad of Japanese soldiers executing bayonet drills on the main square in front of the castle. I crept through the garden that hid me until the soldiers were in sight. They wore sleeveless T-shirts, bands of white were tied around their foreheads, and olive green leg wrappings held the bottoms of their pants tight. They lunged in formation, bellowing out one loud grunt as they thrust into the guts of invisible enemies.

  My empty stomach churned in response. At the far end of the courtyard, a tea vendor was pushing his two-wheeled cart among the patriotic spectators who had gathered to watch and cheer the valiant warriors. Still hidden by the dense foliage, I dug a bill from the mouth of the snake of money Mother had tied around my waist, replaced the rest, and then stepped out to make my way through the crowd. I purchased a millet cake and a cup of tea, knowing that Mother wouldn’t object to the expenditure; I would never be able to find and safeguard Hatsuko if I starved to death before reaching her.

  I stuffed the delicious cake sweetened with sugarcane juice into my mouth. At my feet, pigeons gathered to peck at a shower of crumbs thrown by one of the spectators. Cooing, they approached the crumbs with their jerky, deliberate gait, and then nibbled away at the windfall until it was gone. After a moment, another shower of crumbs fell. When I saw the source of this generosity one word flashed across my mind: juri. I knew that the woman tossing crumbs to the birds was a prostitute by the sheerness of her tonpyan kimono, by the careful shaping of her black eyebrows, by the way her thick black hair was held in a bun atop her head by a long silver pin that flashed in the morning sun. Decent women wore their buns offset to the side so that the tops of their heads were free to carry a basket of potatoes or a piglet tied at the ankles. Her rouged cheeks were pink as a doll baby’s, and her face was pale and velvety with powder. She’d even stained the tips of her nails a delicate coral by binding tinsagu petals to them overnight, something decent girls were forbidden from doing. But mostly I knew she was a juri by the shameless way she wore the sash of her boldly patterned kimono high on her waist to make herself look taller, more slender, and more youthful than the virtuous women like my mother and my aunts, who tied their sashes low on their hips.

  “They’re hungry today, aren’t they?” the juri asked me.

  I glanced away, embarrassed that she’d caught me gaping at her.

  “Oh, look at The General bullying all the others into letting him take more than his share.” She pointed to a big pigeon with his chest puffed out and laughed a laugh of such silken refinement that I had to stare at her. She had lovely teeth: white, without the slightest hint of decay from sucking sugar. Watching the fat pigeon she called The General strutting about, chasing the other pigeons away, I had to laugh as well.

  “What are you doing in Shuri?” the juri asked.

  “I’m going to meet my sister at Himeyuri High School.”

  “Oh a Princess Lily girl,” she said. “She must be very smart. Are you a student there as well?”

  I nodded, wanting her to think that I, too, was very smart.

  “So you must be on your way then to join the others at the Japanese high command headquarters.”

  “Yes.” Though I still didn’t know where this high command headquarters was, I was pleased that I had learned w
here Hatsuko was without revealing that I wasn’t actually a Princess Lily girl.

  With no warning, the juri reached out, took my chin in her fragrantly powdered hand, and tilted it from side to side, studying my face as if I were a horse she was considering buying. She had a forward manner that I assumed must be due to her profession.

  All trace of her former gay demeanor now vanished, she asked intently, “You are a true Uchinānchu, aren’t you?”

  It was pointless to deny; besides the obvious fact that we were speaking in Uchināguchi, no one had a more Okinawan face than I.

  “You come to Shuri because you love our history, don’t you?”

  I didn’t correct her. I thought that our history was charming in a backward way, but the modern, exciting future we’d have once Okinawa had proved her loyalty to the empire, that was really what I loved.

  “You know that we have not always been impoverished farmers. You know that in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries we were traders welcomed in China, Korea, Java, and the South Sea Islands. That Japan, though she invaded our islands and extorted heavy taxes and tributes, was but one of our many trading partners. And not even a favored one.”

  I said nothing; my mother and her sisters were always making treasonous statements just like these. Besides, I needed the juri to show me the way to headquarters.

  “Yet you are also educated.” She stared into my face for so long that I brushed at my nose, fearing that something unpleasant might be protruding.

  “Yes, I think you just might be smart enough and Okinawan enough to survive what is coming. I won’t. Most of us won’t.”