Above the East China Sea: A novel

by Sarah Bird

  A policeman puts his white-gloved hands on me and pushes like I’m a rider on a Tokyo subway. The crowd is packed so tightly that I can’t move. Just as I realize that I’m trapped far from the meeting place, a sound like thunder starts from miles down the street. I feel it low in my gut before I can even identify it as drumming. The distant booming announces that I’m running out of time: The parade has started, the dead are being driven away.

  FORTY-NINE

  A rumbling explosion startles Hatsuko and she clutches onto Mitsue as her heart flaps within her chest like a trapped bird. She waits for the sky to blaze again with the fires of war and wonders how they will find their way out of this churning mass, so that they can flee to the safety of the caves.

  “Auntie,” Hideo asks, bending down to look at Hatsuko, “why are you trembling? It is only the drummers. Mitsue, what is wrong with her? Make her close her mouth. People are staring.”

  “Let them stare,” Mitsue snaps. “She needs to rest. We have to get Hatsuko to a quiet spot.”

  Hatsuko watches the strange man’s face contort into speech, but his words are lost in the thunder of the detonations. The other refugees crush in closer. She can feel their fear as the explosion of the Americans’ bombs comes closer.

  We must head south. We will be safe in the south.

  “Tamiko!” She tries to call her little sister’s name, but the word is lost between her brain and her mouth. She must find her little sister. This time she won’t let her treacherous heart mislead her. This time they won’t be separated. This time they will stay together until they are both safe in their family’s tomb.

  FIFTY

  I push hard against the crowd and they push back even harder. The first group of dancers appears in the street. They wear toenail polish–pink kimonos and look like lines of roses dancing beneath the streetlights. The policemen lock arms and force us farther back.

  A huge chrysanthemum firework explodes overhead. Its blazing petals light up the street for blocks in either direction, and I catch a glimpse of a green arch and two white doves fluttering up to heaven.

  I know which way to go now but am imprisoned by the crowd. I have to get to the green arch so Jake will know I’m there. That I made it. That I’m not just another kid from the base and won’t simply vanish one day, never to be seen or thought of again. But I am trapped; I’ll never connect with Jake. With anyone. Not even Codie.

  A drunk guy in front of me stumbles and falls back, crushing the lily pin on my blouse into my chest until it jabs me hard. I lean in with all my body weight to shove the jerk off me, but he doesn’t budge. After a moment’s debate, I do what Codie would have done. I take the brooch off and stick the pin in the guy’s fat neck. Slapping at the stab like a wasp has bitten him, he whirls around and I slip through. Polite time is over. Whatever it takes, I am going to get to Peace Street in time to meet Jake.

  FIFTY-ONE

  The mob of refugees, driven mad by fear, is a tall, thick forest locking Hatsuko in place. She is lost. Worse, her little sister is lost. The booms, terrifying and inescapable, come closer. Then flares light up the sky, exposing their positions. They must escape. Hatsuko, overcome by weariness after already marching so long to come this far, can’t catch her breath. Sheets of sweat wash down her face even as waves of nausea heave upward. She fears that she will vomit on the refugees around her and fights the urge with every bit of strength she has left. Though she tries to struggle on, her legs have turned rubbery and weak beneath her. She gasps, but the air has become too thick to pull into her lungs. She opens her mouth to scream out her sister’s name, but no sound emerges.

  Instead, all the frantic people melt away, the tall buildings disappear, the bombing stops, a voluptuous silence encloses Hatsuko, and Tamiko’s dear face appears. She is, of course, smiling. And she is dancing. Little Guppy makes her crane-and-pine hand gesture droop comically as she turns her hands into two geese pecking each other. Tamiko doesn’t care about being perfect. She cares about making her big sister laugh.

  Hatsuko smiles and Tamiko’s laughter in return is the only sound in her head. She doesn’t hear Mitsue yelling to Hideo. She doesn’t hear Hideo, video camera pressed to his eye, order his wife to see what is wrong now with the old ladies, that the girls will be passing them in the next group. He has to be ready with the camera. Hatsuko doesn’t hear a child scream that an old lady has fallen. There is no sound at all when, in the darkness above Hatsuko, a halo of cell phones lights up to summon an ambulance.

  FIFTY-TWO

  I use the pin a few more times, though I confine the stabs only to the biggest, most immobile of doofuses. I’m able to take out a few others as they stretch up on tiptoe for a better view simply by pressing my kneecaps against the backs of their overstraightened legs. When they stumble, off balance, I break through the opening they leave. Which is what I’ve just done when, across the street, in a break in the crowd, I catch a glimpse of a girl I recognize. I’m so certain, not just that I know her, but that she is a dear friend that my hand is up, ready to wave, when I realize that who I think she is, is the girl from the portrait in the museum. I think she is Tamiko Kokuba.

  I shake my head and laugh at myself for such skittish suggestibility. A team of dancers passes between us, and I lose sight of the Tamiko look-alike. The dancers wear long jackets of shiny fuchsia and turquoise. Their hair is held back by matching fuchsia headbands. Where the other female teams had swayed in lovely delicate patterns, these girls stomp as ferociously as the boys, and bang just as hard on the small drums they wave above their heads. They dance in their bare feet on pavement that is so hot it steams when boys with buckets running up and down the route splash water onto it. The girls, heads held high, grin into the streetlights as if they don’t notice the heat.

  At the edge of the Girl Power dance team, behind a cloud of steam, the girl from the portrait appears again. This time, somehow, she’s worked her way through the mob lining the street and stands, isolated, at the very front. It’s weird how no one crowds in against her. They simply let the girl stand alone. It’s even weirder how much she resembles the portrait of Tamiko. She looks about twelve, with her hair in pigtails that flip up just beneath her ears. Her impish smile mirrors the curve of her hair. I can’t take my eyes off of her.

  Another team of drummers passes between us. Their heads are covered in green cloth wraps. Smart costumes of cobalt blue outlined in white are belted tightly around their waists. They all carry shiny red taiko drums big as trash cans that they beat the shit out of with batons to accompany their balls-out singing. They swing the massive drums in powerful arcs as they dance, leaping high in the air. Sweat streams into their faces and bursts off their bare arms with each pounding stroke.

  The dancers’ black pantaloons tucked into leggings with vertical black and white stripes become bars flashing past as I struggle to catch glimpses of the girl on the other side of the street that I can’t help thinking of as Tamiko.

  The dancers strike fierce postures, legs high, ankles cocked, as ready to attack as warriors approaching a battle. The pounding of their drums is so loud I can’t think. It’s like being on the Cyclotron at the state fair and having all your thoughts spun out of you by centrifugal force. Amid all the noise and chaos a clear view of the girl opens up. Just like Tamiko, she has a face as broad and open and happy as a baby frog’s that spreads wide as she stares straight at me and smiles, a serene, unhurried smile. She waves in my direction. I’m so certain that she must be waving to someone behind me that I glance around several times. But no one else appears to notice her: She’s waving at me. And then she begins beckoning. She wants me to come to her.

  FIFTY-THREE

  After Mitsue gives the attendant her cousin’s information, Hatsuko feels herself being lifted up and tries to tell the stretcher bearers to help Tamiko first; she, too, must have been wounded in the explosion. But the words are flashing silver fish her tongue can’t catch. Hatsuko knows it’s merely a concussion from
the bomb. She’ll be herself soon. Meanwhile, whatever it takes, she must not lose her little sister again. She can’t. Not after finally finding her. She struggles to rise, but hands force her back down. She feels the comforting boa-constrictor squeeze of a blood-pressure cuff, then the cool disk of a stethoscope on the inside of her elbow. How like the detestable Head Nurse Tanaka to keep such fine tools as these hidden. And an ambulance? Why had they not used this ambulance before? So many were lost who could have been saved.

  Feeling like a paper doll floating through the air, Hatsuko is lifted onto a stretcher, then slid into the back of the ambulance. The air-raid sirens shriek. Explosions of red flash in a rhythmic strobing through the vehicle. They speed forward.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  The girl keeps waving. She gestures with more and more insistence for me to cross the street and come to her. I hold my hands out to indicate the unbroken river of dancers and drummers blocking the street and the police who are even more vigilant than before about stopping anyone from setting one foot onto the asphalt. There’s no way I can get across.

  I keep shaking my head, certain that I can’t be seeing what I think I’m seeing. Yet each time I catch another glimpse of her, the girl resembles the portrait at the museum even more strongly. It’s like seeing Tamiko Kokuba come back to life. The obvious explanation is that the girl across the street is her descendant. I don’t understand how, though, amid this throng, the girl and I have been able to single each other out. Maybe through some insider Okinawan communications network, Mitsue told her about me. Maybe the girl followed me from Madadayo. Whatever the explanation, I can’t wait to give her her ancestor’s pin. I stretch my shirt out to show her the pin and act out presenting it to her.

  Amazingly, in all the noise and turmoil, the girl seems to know immediately that the pin is for her. She nods with that same odd serenity and gestures with both her hands, as if pulling me toward herself. As if she wanted to embrace me. For a moment, floating in the air above her head, two oddly phosphorescent balls appear. Just as I motion again to the impenetrable wall of policemen, drummers, and dancers between us, though, the street suddenly empties, and all goes silent. Even the siren.

  The girl waves for me to hurry up, to grab this chance while I have it. I shove my way into the street, certain I will be pushed back. But the barricade of police arms melts away. I keep my eyes riveted on the girl; if I lose sight of her, I won’t ever find her again. Even though I never take my eyes from her, she disappears. The strange orbs, glowing like giant fireflies, appear again. Right below them is the girl. This time, though, the face staring at me from the crowd is the starved face of the girl I found in the cave. I couldn’t help her before, couldn’t help anyone. But I know now. I know I can save her this time. Save her and make everything all right.

  At that moment, the crowd suddenly starts screaming at me; a nearby siren shrieks at full volume; lights whirl. They all conspire to try to stop me. But I won’t let them. Not this time. The girl is only a few yards away, then a few feet away. She holds her hand out to me. I hold mine out to her. All I have to do is take her hand, and I know everything will be all right. We reach out to each other. I’m about to touch her outstretched fingers when some goon slams into me so hard that I go flying onto the street. I slide across the pavement, the asphalt shredding the bare shoulder I land on.

  I sit up, furious at the idiot who smashed into me, and search the crowd frantically for the girl. Faces strobe past, illuminated in an ambulance’s flashing light. I don’t understand how the ambulance could have gotten here so quickly. I must have blacked out, and the ambulance is for me. Except that the crowd ignores me as they stare down, shocked, at something out of my sight. The police shove them back, but the spectators crane their necks to keep staring. Most of the women have their hands pressed against open mouths in expressions of horror. I’m certain it’s the girl. That she collapsed, possibly died.

  I have to get to her. I drag myself up off the hot street. Blood dripping from my scraped shoulder, I shove my way into the crowd and keep shoving until I can see what they’re all gawking at.

  It’s a body sprawled out on the street.

  It’s Jake.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  Hatsuko, who has been begging the attendant with his stethoscope on her heart to stop, is delighted when the driver finally slams on his brakes. She has succeeded. She’s made them understand that they can’t leave without finding her little sister.

  Staticky orders from the ambulance dispatcher are broadcast into the back of the ambulance. The attendant barks that they can’t transport the person they hit. They have to wait for the police. Dispatch will have to send another unit for the patient they’ve already got. The dispatcher says all the rules are off. The city is in complete gridlock. No other vehicles can get in; they’re the only ones available.

  A blast of hot air puffs into the chilly ambulance when the back door is opened. The ambulance rocks beneath Hatsuko as the attendant hops out, then bounces again when another victim of the bombing is loaded aboard. Hatsuko forces her eyes open, but the world is a blur. Still, she is certain that the new patient is Tamiko. She has found her little sister. Finally.

  When the doors are slammed shut, she tries to roll over to face Tamiko, but her limbs won’t respond. Though Hatsuko lies on the stretcher as still as a stone, her heart flutters wildly; she is desperate for Tamiko to come to her. There is so much she must tell Little Guppy, and so little time left.

  FIFTY-SIX

  As the ambulance attendants help Jake into the ambulance he tells them something as he points at me. The bleeding from where I gashed my arm has mostly stopped, but Jake convinces them that I need help too. I try to explain that the cuts look a lot worse than they are, but neither of the EMTs has time for a discussion. They’ve already got a patient on the stretcher, and the old woman needs help a lot more than either Jake or I do. The second EMT hops in back with us, the doors slam, and we speed off as rapidly as the crowd can clear out of our way.

  “Jake, how are you?” I ask as the Okinawan EMT shines a penlight into Jake’s eyes and orders him to follow its beam.

  “Seriously, I’m fine,” he answers, after telling the attendant how many fingers he’s holding up.

  “Seriously, you got hit by an ambulance.”

  “Bumped is more like it. I was stunned for a minute, but I’m okay now. The real question is, what the hell were you doing sauntering across the street? It was a miracle that my drum team was stopped at that spot right when you ran out in front of an ambulance. An ambulance that had its lights and siren on. What is up with that?” Jake looks at me and waits for an answer. He is still in his Eisā drummer’s costume.

  I consider lying. But I don’t and simply answer, “I saw her. The girl from the cave.”

  Jake nods, and I’m surprised at how unsurprised he is. “Yeah, I thought it might be something like that. Happens on the last day of Obon. Lot of the dead have too good a time and don’t want to go back. Hope someone else chases her back to her world.”

  The ambulance, blaring its horn to clear the crowd, gains speed. Before I can say anything more, the old woman strapped onto the stretcher a few inches from us opens her eyes and looks around, a confused, haunted expression on her face. She moves her mouth like a fish gasping for oxygen. “Jake, she needs something. What should we do?”

  Jake speaks to the attendant, who explains that the old woman is stabilized and they’re not supposed to do anything more except transport her to the hospital.

  But she clearly needs help. A pair of glasses, their thick, heavy lenses shattered, lies on the stretcher next to her. I realize she can’t see and how scared and disoriented she must be. There’s so little room between us that I only have to bend forward to enter into her field of vision. Though I’m certain I’m nothing more than a blurry smudge to her, the old lady smiles a smile like angels on Christmas morning when she sees me. But then, as she reaches a trembling hand up, I realize that the smile i
s not for me. It’s for the object that she strokes while exhaling a trembling sigh of relief deeper than any I’ve ever heard. It’s for the lily brooch still pinned on my blouse.

  At the hospital, the old woman seems agitated when I have to step away so that the nurses and orderlies who rush out to greet us can transfer her to a gurney. She reaches out her hand to me, and I take it. Though he objects, Jake is ordered to ride in a wheelchair.

  The emergency room smells of sweat and vomit and is packed with casualties of the combustion of three days of drinking and close contact with extended family, all coming to a mad crescendo at the Ten Thousand Eisā Dance Parade. We are rushed through the waiting room, back to the examining area. Doctors in white lab coats, nurses in blue scrubs, techs in green whip past, their shoes brushing the floor in a brisk rhythm punctuated by the constant beeping of monitors. A young female physician directs the gurney to be wheeled into a newly vacated examining room. I try to slip away, but the woman only hangs on to my hand more tightly.

  Whether they assume we’re family, or simply because all the other rooms are full, Jake and I are waved in while the old woman is examined, a heart monitor hooked up, and an IV started. The odors, human and medicinal, combined with the general frenzy of the emergency room act on her like smelling salts under a boxer’s nose. She shakes her head and, blinking wildly, struggles as if she were expected to get up and perform vital duties. I hurry over to calm her. She clutches my hand and reaches out again for the lily pin. Her fingers close around it, and words that sound even more foreign to me than Japanese tumble out as if a timer is running and she can’t talk fast enough.

  I lean in close, stroke her face, and croon, “Shi-shi-shi.” She relaxes her clawing grip and I pin the lily brooch on her blouse. I place her free hand on the pin, and her face lights up. She grins as if this were part of a secret joke between us and pulls me close. I am enclosed in a cloud of memory and the smells of Pond’s cold cream, green tea, and a vinegary body odor. Her voice falls to a whisper as she speaks only to me. I am distressed, confused by the urgency of her feverish monologue that she seems to expect me to understand. Then, from out of the cacophony, a name spoken by a nurse reporting to a doctor about the new patient emerges as clearly as if it were my own: Kokuba Hatsuko. The only Princess Lily girl without a pin. The big sister.