by Sarah Bird
He’s especially pleased that my mom’s boss, the Duke of Douche-baggery, Colonel Manness, whom Mom nicknamed Manliness because he’s so not, would have to be notified. Manness is a by-the-book, old-school stickler who is threatened by everyone, but especially by women like my mom who could kick his ass three ways into next Sunday. The citation would give him the chance to ask her, “If you can’t command your own family, how can you command a unit?” And that would land hard on her, then a whole lot harder on me.
“Let it slide, okay? Look, our apartment is right there. I could say I was just playing in my backyard.”
“And everyone else could say that if I don’t cite you, I was just sucking up to the boss.”
“Boone. Dude.”
He laughs, puts the clipboard down. “I was just messing with you.”
“Very funny.”
He twists around in his seat, gets comfortable. “So what do you hear from your mom? Can’t believe they pulled her off when we’re already so shorthanded.”
I act like I’d read even one of her texts. “Sounds like it’s going fine.”
“No shit, I’d give my left nut to be out in the Sandbox doing what I actually trained for.”
The Sandbox? Afghanistan?
“I heard they’re transporting some high-values.”
High-value enemy combatants. I scrub the scared quaver from my voice and say, all casual, “Yeah, she mentioned that.”
“Really? Damn it. That’s what I trained for. Not babysitting brats and keeping guys from beating on their wives. I mean ‘Security Forces’? Come on. What strings did your mom pull to get to go?”
Get to go?
I see my mom again, packing, filling her duffel with ABUs in the new blue-gray camo pattern. When she’d thrown in her tan boots, I’d asked, “Aren’t those only authorized in theater operations?”
In answer, she popped her eyes at me, said, “Listen to you, all ‘theater operations,’ ” zipped up her bag, hauled it out to sit by the front door, ready for her 0500 departure time, and left to meet her buddies at the Rocker Club.
Now I want a real answer and say the one thing I’m certain will open Boone up like a can of tomatoes. “Probably because she’s a woman.”
“I didn’t say it, but it sure ain’t like she could have volunteered any quicker than me.”
She volunteered to go? I open my mouth and take shallow breaths, so that Boone won’t see or hear that my heart has accelerated so much I’m panting at the thought that my mother volunteered to go to a war zone. Where her daughter was killed. I thought I’d made myself invulnerable to my mom’s behavior, but this evidence that I mean so little to her that she’d risk leaving me entirely alone in the world, that I really, truly, in fact, don’t have anyone, panics me.
“But,” Boone adds, “on the real, you got a high-value female, it’s a whole cultural deal. No males allowed. You need a female on the transport. I get that. The pool of females with the right training just ain’t that big. So they pretend like it’s open to all us humps stuck here on the Rock, but basically? They already tapped who they wanted. So your mom, I get her. But Wheeler? Vinger? Maldonado?” He names the guys chosen to go with her. “Why’d those guys get to go? I smoked Maldonado in Counterinsurgency. And Urban Terrain. I was like, ‘Dude, did you never play “Counter Strike”?’ ”
“Yeah, sucks for you.”
She chose to leave.
Boone’s radio crackles. He takes the call—barking dog—starts the engine. “Duty calls. Luz, who you staying with?”
“Here. This is our place.”
I start to open the door; Boone catches my eye in the rearview, holds it, asks again with lots of added emphasis, “No, Luz, for real, who are you staying with, because I know that your mom knows the base housing reg that states that ‘In the event of leave or an extended TDY in which the service member is absent from her quarters for five days or more, dependents under the age of eighteen will not be left unsupervised.’ ”
Of course my mom knows the reg. And of course she knows I know and expected me to be smart enough not to get caught breaking it.
“I maybe can let the curfew thing slide, but not this. So let me ask again, Luz: Who are you staying with? Because I cannot allow you to remain in base housing without supervision.”
I run through the list of my latest Quasis. I really wish that one of them was an actual friend. Someone who’d cover for me if I showed up at their door with an MP, acting like I was staying with their family. But I don’t even know where any of them lives. Except for one. “Uh, yeah, not a problem. I’m staying with the Furusatos.”
“They on base?”
“Of course. That’s regs, right?”
“What’s the address?”
“Over by the golf course.”
“I need an address, Luz.”
“Yeah, it’s something-something.… Shit, I can’t remember the name of the street.”
Boone shakes his head, starts the engine. “Give me directions.”
TWENTY-FIVE
Fortunately, when we get to the Furusatos’ house, Jake is cool, saying in a casual, unsurprised way, “Hey, Luz.”
I start talking then. Fast. “Yeah, Jake, hey, hi, here I am. Again. As usual. Because I’m staying with you while my mom is TDY, since she’d never leave an underage dependent unsupervised in base housing.”
Jake doesn’t miss a beat. “Which is why you’ve been staying with me. Us. My whole family, including my parents.”
Boone takes a minute to size up the situation. He glances around at Jake’s house. It’s nice. Not just officer nice. Civilian nice. Walls a nonreg color, shelves filled with the ultimate weight-allowance buster—books—stuff hanging everywhere: paintings, photos. So many nail holes drilled into the concrete walls.
Boone puts on his official voice, asks, “Might I have a word with your father?”
“Yes, sir, no problem, sir. If you’re really sure that’s what you want. I’m just saying that because my dad, Colonel Furusato, has a predawn briefing and he might not be too happy about being woken up, sir.”
I’m surprised by what a convincing liar Jake is and almost believe myself that his father is an officer giving predawn briefings instead of a glorified lawn boy in the civil service. It’s lucky that it’s too dark outside to see that there’s no plate with a name and a rank on Jake’s house. “But it’s your choice, Airman …” Jake carefully reads off the name tape. “Boone.”
Boone nervously crimps the insignia on his black beret between his palm and fingers so that the screaming eagle is all erect, as he weighs the joys of fucking with me against the dangers of annoying an officer. Before the opportunity for Boone to call Jake’s bluff even arises, I step through the door and stand next to Jake like we’re a fifties couple and Boone is the dinner guest who has overstayed his welcome and we’re trying to ease him on his way.
“Okay, then, Boone, I guess we’re cool here. We should wrap this up. Don’t want to wake the colonel.”
“Yeah,” Jake agrees, “he’s kind of hard-core, know what I’m sayin’?”
Boone blinks, furrows his brow.
I wave nightie-night, call out, “Thanks for the ride,” as I gently close the door.
Jake and I huddle by the door until we hear the car pull away. I crack the door. When the white cruiser has finally disappeared, I start to step outside. “I should leave. I can get back to my place without anyone seeing me.”
“I don’t think so.” Jake pulls me in and shuts the door. “Not now that you’re officially listed as staying here. If anything happens, my father will get reported, and that would be so not good. You would not believe how far under the radar we have to stay to be able to keep living here.”
“Jake, I’m sorry. I didn’t know who else—”
“No worries.”
In the living room, behind Jake, a large cabinet dominates a wall. A pair of doors is open, and sticks of burning incense poking from a holder lacquered sc
arlet and gold send twines of smoke up, scenting the air with a fragrance both floral and ancient.
“So you went with them,” Jake says with obvious annoyance. “To see the ‘haunted house.’ ”
“I did, but—”
“But what?”
His hostility catches me off balance, and I can’t figure out how or whether to tell him about what I experienced.
Jake takes my silence for shame, and his tone is beyond dismissive when he says, “Yeah, right. You’re really Uchinānchu. Did they even bother telling you about that place?”
“That it was built over a tomb?”
“You knew and you still went in?” He shakes his head in something between amazement and disgust. “Wow, you are so not who I thought you were. You’re not even who you were pretending to be, are you?”
“Jake, it’s not like that. I had a reason to go in.”
“What? To check out the freak show? See the superscary Okinawan ghosts?”
“No, nothing like that.”
“So what then? You writing a paper on primitive superstitions of Ryukyuans? An anthropological study of strange funeral rituals?”
“Jake, listen. The reason I went in was …” I stop, tripped up by the sight of the gallery of family photos haloing the cabinet. Lots of cute little girls in kimonos with high obis snugged up under their armpits. Bowlegged grandparents on wooden getas leaning on canes. Couples on their wedding days, husbands standing stiffly beside brides made up like geishas with powder-white skin and cherry-red rosebud mouths. Some of the black-and-whites are so old that the subjects have the rigid, unblinking look of people photographed with flash powder who had been ordered not to move. How do I explode the mess of my family, my life, my possibly deranged imaginings, in front of them?
When I don’t speak, Jake shrugs, says, “Yeah? Pretty much what I thought.” He points down the hall. “I think there’s clean sheets on the bed in the guest room. See you in the morning.” Walking away, he tosses over his shoulder, “Or not.”
Just before he closes the door of his bedroom behind himself, I call out, my voice louder and tighter than I expected, “I went in because they told me you can communicate with the dead there. I went in to try to make contact with my sister. I may be going crazy, but I’ve been getting signs that I’m supposed to do something. Except I don’t know what. I don’t know what a yuta is, but I think I’m supposed to go to one. And I …” I stop because I feel a warm gush of tears rising in my chest. I stomp them down so hard that I sound almost hostile when I say, “I need your help.”
Jake doesn’t turn around, and for a moment I’m convinced he won’t. That he’ll shut the door on me and my psychotic rambling. He doesn’t even face me when he says, “Maybe I’ll help you, but there are some things you have to understand first.”
“I know, Jake. There’s so much I have to understand.”
He comes to me then, gets right in my face. “First off, this isn’t any folkloric bullshit or cultural awareness field trip. This is Okinawa. This is how it is: We live with the dead and the dead live with us. It’s not spooky or creepy or woo-woo; it’s just how it is. Got that?”
“Yes.”
He studies me. “How do I know you won’t be standing back, taking notes, judging?”
“Because if I don’t figure out what Codie wants me to do, if I have to live the rest of my life completely alone, I’ll kill myself.”
Jake nods, and though he doesn’t say anything, I know he understands more than I have any right to expect him to. I want to tell him the whole truth—that I saw a dead girl in the cave and she needs me to save her and her baby—but I can’t get the words out. That part is so crazy that it will make him miss the real point: Codie. Codie is always the point.
Jake leads me to the back door, slides it open, and we stand for a moment with the air-conditioned inside air rushing past us. In the living room a clock bongs out. Jake says, “Midnight. Happy Nakanuhi.”
“Come again?”
“Second day of Obon. Starts right”—the clock chimes a final time—“now.” He steps out the door, stops. “Okay, I’m going to show you something that no other base kid has ever seen. But if you ever tell anyone about it, you’ll wreck a lot of lives.”
He doesn’t wait for me to promise that I won’t ever say a word, just stalks off across the course, which the streetlights shining on the freshly watered grass has turned into a lake of silver.
I follow him into it.
TWENTY-SIX
“Eight small villages once existed where Kadena is now,” Jake says as he spins numbers into the lock on the gate of the Deigo Tree Golf Course. A sign on the gate informs members, “Course closed in observance of Obon.” An illuminated display next to the fence shows photos of various holes taken in the early summer, when the trees were in full bloom. They’re coral trees like the ones shading Codie’s grave. A small plaque says that on Okinawa they’re called deigo trees, and that the red blossoms were named the prefectural flower in honor of the blood that was shed during the Battle of Okinawa.
Jake opens the gate, we step in, and he locks it behind us. As we walk through the dark, empty course with its perfect swells and paths, it’s like being in Disneyland after hours. It’s the perfect place for a quick hookup, and for a split second I wonder whether that’s where we’re headed after all. But the determined way Jake strides forward eliminates that possibility.
As we go farther in, away from the lights, it grows dark and all I can hear are the sounds of distant air conditioners cycling on and off, frogs croaking, birds singing lonely songs, and the rustle of a breeze swirling around in the high branches of tall trees. It takes no effort for me to imagine that this was once the site of a peaceful, rural village. I try to imagine what secret could possibly be hidden here. Jake leads me off the fairway into a heavily wooded area. Signs warn golfers, DANGER: SNAKES. REMAIN ON FAIRWAY.
I stop. “Jake?”
“Don’t worry. I’ve got antivenin at the house. Most likely you won’t die before I can run back and get it.”
“ ‘Most likely’?”
“I’m messing with you. There aren’t any snakes. Come on. We’re almost there.”
Once we turn off the fairway, it is so dark that I have to hold on to the back of Jake’s shirt to follow him. The trail ends at a large concrete platform surrounded by a high fence with razor wire at the top. A sign on the gate has “Danger” and “High Voltage” written in Japanese characters, English, and Spanish, and the icon of a lightning bolt stabbing a guy in the chest as he falls backward. Inexplicably, the fragrance of jasmine and sandalwood incense perfumes the air. Jake pulls the unlocked gate open and gestures for me to go in.
I point to the signs. “Uh, electricidad? Peligro de muerte?”
Jake bangs his hand against the nearest of several tall metal sheds. It clangs hollowly. “They’re fake. The only things that are real are these,” Jake says as he lights several of the candles sitting on the concrete. Hidden behind the sheds is a small stone shrine in the shape of a house with a thatched roof. It is encircled by coins, incense, fruit, small cakes, glasses of sake. Each group of offerings is carefully placed within one of eight outlines.
Jake points to them and says, “Every one of those is the outline of one of the eight villages that were eradicated when the U.S. military claimed all this land.”
I look more closely and see, etched into the concrete, drawings of streams with tiny fish swimming in them, plots of land with images of potatoes, stick figures dancing, the distinctive turtle-shell shape of tombs. They’re hieroglyphics describing a vanished world drawn by people still mourning the hometowns that they can see on the other side of a barbed-wire fence, but that are lost to them forever. It’s like the brat hometown curse taken to an unbearable level.
Jake taps the drawing of a tomb. “After the war, after the military seized their homes, their farms, that’s what the displaced villagers wanted most. They wanted their ancestors. They would ne
ver be at peace if they weren’t allowed to return to the spot where their tombs had once stood in order to fulfill their obligations so that their ancestors could enter the next realm and then be able to guide and protect them.
“And that was the deal the villagers, led by my great-great-grandfather, managed to get from the base commander. In exchange for the villagers not protesting the golf course, their representative, my great-great-grandfather, was made manager of the course. A section of the course was set aside, and each year during the three days of Obon, the course is closed and the oldest male of each village family is allowed to bring offerings and pay his respects. But the deal was never official, so—”
“So that’s why you and your family pretty much have to live and work at the course and put up with ignorant comments from people like Kirby.”
“Oh, did Kernshaw tell you what a big sellout I am?”
I shrug. “Sort of. Not exactly.”
“Don’t worry. It’s nothing he hasn’t said to me in person.”
A sudden stillness comes over the course. Even the trees stop rustling. I glance around, feeling like we’re being watched. And not just by one or two people—it seems as though a great crowd is studying us. But there’s no one there, and I’m overwhelmed again by the same sensation I had in Murder House: that I am hurtling downward toward my death. Again, the strength drains from my body and I sink to my knees. The instant I do, the earth is solid beneath me once more. My heart still pounds with fear. I look up at Jake and beg him, “I need to know what to do.”
Jake kneels next to me. “It’s okay, Luz. You’re doing what you’re supposed to do. What the kami want you to do. You’re showing respect.”
“Kami?”
“Spirits. Deities. Ancestors. All of the above. There’s no exact English translation. Should we ask them for their help?” Before I can answer, Jake claps his hands sharply, then begins speaking in a casual, conversational tone. “Hello, this is Jake Furusato, great-great-grandson of Eitarō Furusato, who had this shrine built for you. And this is my friend Luz James. We’ve come to ask for your help.”
