Above the East China Sea: A novel

by Sarah Bird

  The hāfu girl asks what’s happening and the boy explains. “She wants to take her home.”

  “Is that a good idea?”

  “No, they’re working to get her admitted right now.”

  The boy tells Mitsue this, and she asks, “Why? Hatsuko is dying. If she stays here, the doctors will attach her to machines that will force her worn-out body to do what it should no longer be forced to do. And for what? To make her last days a misery? Worst of all, if she remains here, she will be cremated as the law requires now, and then my cousin will be denied what she wants most: a proper Okinawan funeral.”

  The boy has no answer.

  “That is why she wrote this.” Mitsue holds up the document that Hatsuko had gone over so many times with her. “All her instructions are very clear. Now up! Get up!”

  The boy, startled by how fierce the gentle old woman has become, stands, and pushes the wheelchair to her. Mitsue leans over Hatsuko and whispers in her old friend’s ear, “It’s time, dear cousin.”

  Hatsuko’s eyes flutter open.

  “She’s ready,” Mitsue tells the boy, who has come to understand the part he must play. He gathers Hatsuko’s whisper of a body in his arms and settles her into the wheelchair with a delicacy that causes the hāfu girl’s eyes to go soft with longing.

  As he pushes the chair out through the waiting area, Mitsue tells the boy, “If you’re still here when an angry man with a nervous wife arrives, tell him that his great-aunt has been taken home. You might also mention that she has removed him as the executor of her estate and has deeded all her property directly to the Okinawan Heritage Society.”

  “I think we’re leaving now too.”

  “That’s just as well. He’s quite unpleasant and bound to become more so.”

  Though the boy begs her to allow him to run and fetch his car to drive them home, Mitsue insists upon taking a cab. The boy selects a comfortable taxi for them and helps tuck Hatsuko into the backseat, where she can lie down with her head in Mitsue’s lap, and the two women set off for Madadayo, for home.

  SIXTY-ONE

  Jake and I drive a long time without saying anything, and the smells of Okinawa at night fill the car with their own conversation. It is one I’ve never heard correctly before. Instead of sickly sweet, the night simply smells green, humid and blossoming and full of life re-creating itself.

  The red glow from Kadena’s twenty-four thousand feet of runways comes into view. It feels like a fire burning in the hearth, welcoming me home. Runway lights are home. My home. The home I grew up with. Just like they were home for my mother. What she grew up with. They’re what we were given, and, no matter how many times we move, how the bases and states and countries switch around, runway lights will always be what feels like home to us.

  I want the coming-home feeling to go on. I don’t want it wrecked by what Jake has to tell me. I’m exhausted and I know that’s why my eyes fill when I think about how everything will end tomorrow. Tomorrow Christy comes back. Tomorrow my mom comes back. My mission has been accomplished. I try to come up with another reason for sticking around.

  As we approach the gate, Jake says, “There was one thing Hatsuko kept saying.”

  “There was?”

  “Yeah, she kept repeating it over while she stared really hard at you. I guess I caught it because it’s something my mom says all the time. Nuchi du takara.”

  “Nuchi du takara,” I repeat, as if the strange words will straighten themselves out if I put them in my mouth.

  “Life is the treasure.”

  “ ‘Life is the treasure.’ That’s what she was saying to me?”

  “Yeah, really emphatically too.”

  “Nuchi du takara,” I say, remembering the words then and how Hatsuko had spoken them more as a command than as a statement.

  “That saying pulled Okinawans through some tough times. Some really tough times.” Jake says in a way that makes me know he’s talking about my tough times and about me making it through. He pulls into our carport, kills the engine, starts off, “Luz—”

  I stop him. “Jake, don’t, okay? I understand. You’re with Christy. You were with her when I met you. Can we just leave it like this?”

  “Luz—”

  “No, Jake, I have to live here.” The instant I say it, “have to live,” I know it’s true. “I have to be a real part of this”—I stumble over the word that is as right as it is corny—“community. I can’t start off screwing everything up. Whatever it was, it’s over.”

  Before he can answer, I’m out of the car. I don’t look back, don’t even hesitate until I’m inside the apartment. I lock the door behind me and go to the back patio, where there’s a view of the runway. I sit out in the dense air and think about Hatsuko’s message for me, life is the treasure, and about making it through tough times. The more I concentrate on those words, the stronger the sense of Codie being present grows, until I remember that making it through tough times, really tough times, is what Codie and I have always done. I stare at the runway in the distance so long that the glowing trident of red and gold lights feels like home again.

  SIXTY-TWO

  The cool air of dawn brings Hatsuko the indispensable scent of the sea and the fragrance of sixty years of incense burned at the butsudan, mixed with the fresh smell of the igusa straw tatami beneath her. Now that she rests on her own futon she is ready. She knows that her final journey has begun when she hears again the chickens clucking and pecking about for tasty bugs. Goats bleating out their impatience to be fed. Pigs grunting as they root through cooling mud for the bits of sweet potato Mother has thrown out. Missing is the mooing of the cows, since they have all been requisitioned by the Imperial Army.

  The groaning of wood against leather signals Papaya’s arrival, carrying a cartload of night soil. The leathery leaves of the tall sea hibiscus that line the narrow path slap against the cart as she makes her way out to the fields. A rustling in the thatched roof high overhead is followed by a series of happy chirps, and Hatsuko imagines the gecko that brought luck to her family puffing up the sac at his throat into a lovely pink bubble.

  When their old rooster Kobo crows to announce her last day on earth, Hatsuko has only one regret: She never found Tamiko’s remains. Her sister’s earthbound spirit came to her last night only long enough for her to explain and be forgiven but not to learn where Tamiko’s bones are buried, which means that Tamiko will not be waiting for her in the next realm. She touches the lily pin on her chest and tells Mitsue, “Please make sure that no one removes this pin.”

  “Of course.”

  “Good,” she says, then speaks her final words, “I will see you again soon, my dearest friend.” A short while later, Kokuba Hatsuko leaves this world as easily as a boat slipping its moorings.

  With her cousin’s last breath set free, Mitsue goes to work. It has been nearly half a century since she was part of a true Okinawan funeral, but with Hatsuko’s instructions to guide her, she calls in the five selected female relatives. Together they bathe Hatsuko, cut her fingernails, toenails, and hair, and wrap the clippings in fine rice paper to be buried with her. They dress her in the kimono Hatsuko had purchased for this day. Mitsue smiles when she sees that the kimono is printed in bright bingata style with images of her favorite animal, the Okinawan rail, a flightless bird being driven to extinction by the foreign invaders, mongooses, and cats. She fastens the lily pin to the front of her cousin’s kimono. As the backs of her fingers brush against the washboard ridges of her cousin’s motionless chest, the kami cause her to recall the hāfu girl trying to give her the lily pin. As is so often the case with the ways of the kami, she doesn’t understand why they put the girl in her heart. All that is clear is what must be done.

  When they’re finished, Mitsue dispatches her helpers to notify everyone in Madadayo. There is only one outsider who must be told the news. The kami have made their mysterious wishes known. Mitsue begins making the calls that will connect her to the American girl.
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  SIXTY-THREE

  When my phone rings early the next morning, I’m surprised to see Jake’s name appear and assume that he’s slipping in one final communication before he returns to Christy. Before I can tell him I am serious and not to call anymore, he says, “Mitsue just called.”

  “Mitsue? From Madadayo? How did she even get your number?”

  “At the hospital she recognized from my uniform what team I dance with and called the center where we practice. They gave her my number.”

  “Wow, that’s random.”

  “No, that’s Okinawa. There aren’t six degrees of separation between any of us. More like two. Three at the most. Anyway, Mitsue wanted me to let you know that Hatsuko is gone.”

  “Oh.” I don’t know what to say and settle on, “Thanks for telling me.”

  “She wants you to come to the funeral.”

  “Me? Why?”

  “She said you’d know why. She made me promise that I’d make sure you were there. It’s today. In Madadayo. An hour before sunset. I’d take you myself but—”

  “It’s fine, Jake. No worries. I’ll figure it out.”

  “Luz—”

  “Jake, really, can you not talk about this? I understand. You and Christy. I get it. I always knew you were together. Seriously, don’t stress.”

  “And, Luz, seriously, shut up, okay? It’s not that simple. I just wanted to tell you that I have obligations. To her. To our families. We’ve all known one another for a long time. I know this is probably hard for you to understand, but it means that I have to do this the right way. And that will take time. Do you trust me?”

  I think about the question, and answer, “I do,” because, surprisingly, it’s the truth. As I hang up, Jake’s message, “She said you’d know why,” echoes in my mind, because Mitsue is right; I just don’t know how I’m going to accomplish what I now know I have to do. Not with my mom coming home. All I’m sure of is that I need her, and I need her car.

  The first step is, obviously, cleaning her room. The havoc I find there seems unfamiliar, as if an entirely different person had wreaked it. I return the photo of Delmar Vaughn and the envelope with “yuta” written on it to their hiding spot. I pack the socks back into tight balls, make the bed with hospital corners crisp enough to cut yourself on, and hang all the uniforms up with the perfect amount of space between each one. Somehow, as I return my mom’s room to its original state of immaculate order, the confusion in my mind gets sorted out too and a plan emerges, complete with all the lies I’ll need to tell to implement it.

  In the storage area at the end of the carport, I drag out our battered olive-drab footlocker with the broken brass latches and sweat-curled leather grips. “Overholt, Eugene, Airman 2nd Class E-3,” is stenciled in white on the dented metal top. Next to the name of the man I will still always think of as my grandfather is glued the tattered, browned remnants of a shipping label with the destination typed at the bottom: Kadena Air Base. We once had a tiny key to open the brass lock, but it disappeared long ago, so my mom popped it open with a kitchen knife and we filled it with our stuff.

  Glued inside the top of the lid are the magazine photos my grandfather pasted there before he shipped out on his first trip away from Missouri: Clint Eastwood in a poncho and a flat cowboy hat with a thin cigar clenched between his front teeth. Elvis and Priscilla getting married. Raquel Welch in a fur bikini. A red Dodge Charger. I wonder for a moment about what kind of a badass Eugene had dreamed of being. Whether Delmar Vaughn or the U.S. Air Force stole those dreams. Or if Okinawa and my grandmother were the most badass things that were ever, under any circumstances, going to happen to E-3 Overholt.

  I take out the divider on top. Underneath it are report cards: mine, Codie’s. Finger paintings. Crayon drawings. Locks of hair and impossibly tiny baby teeth in Ziploc bags with either Codie’s or my name Sharpied on them. Albums with bright color photos show Codie and me blowing out birthday candles; sitting under Christmas trees unwrapping presents; standing in front of a base house, squinting into the sun, holding up Easter baskets. I uncover a plaster-of-paris handprint with Codie’s name written into the plaster when it was still wet. I fit my hand over the print and cover it entirely with just my palm. It was my grandmother, my anmā, who must have saved all the memorabilia from mine and Codie’s childhood, since the mementos end around the time she died.

  Pulling myself out of this memory dive, I dig back in and find what I’m looking for: the kimonos Anmā made for Codie and me for Girls’ Day and shipped to us when we were stationed in Germany. We’d been disappointed because the kimonos weren’t made of bright fabric with pink cherry blossoms and blue Mount Fujis printed on it. Instead, she’d taken apart one of her drab old kimonos from Okinawa and made the dull, dark indigo fabric printed with a subtle pattern of white cross-hatchings into our kimonos.

  Though we thought the kimonos were dreary, we both loved the soft lining that Anmā had sewn in so we could wear them in cold, snowy Germany. She had made that lining by piecing together squares from our old baby blankets and it was a patchwork of blue and pink kittens chasing balls of yarn, baby Donald Ducks and baby Mickey Mouses playing badminton, rows of pink elephants holding one another’s tails, and storks in mailmen’s uniforms flying through the air dangling happy babies in slings from their long, pointed beaks. She’d made the blankets before Codie and I were born, and they captured a whole cartoon world of happy expectancy. Anmā had even sewn little pockets into the lining. Sometimes we flipped the kimonos inside out to show the pastel patchwork. But we liked having the soft flannel menagerie cuddled against our skin too much to do that very often.

  I neatly snip out a large square of the lining from Codie’s kimono so that it again looks like a blanket waiting to receive a child about to be born. I carefully place one of Codie’s curls and a baby tooth inside the little pocket, wrap it all into a tight bundle, and stuff it inside a red-and-green, holly-bedecked gift bag left over from Christmas, then set out for the runway to meet my mom’s flight. As I cut through the ravine, sweeping spiderwebs radiant with early morning light out of the way, I rehearse all the lies I will need to tell my mom in order to do what I have to do, what the kami want me to do.

  SIXTY-FOUR

  Throughout the long day Mitsue receives the visits of representatives from each of the households in Madadayo. Every visitor presses into her hand an envelope containing small offerings of money to help defray entombment expenses. As noon approaches, kinsmen are dispatched to clear the brush and weeds along the path to the family tomb and in the courtyard in front of it. The men remove the stone slab closing the tomb and leave fresh mud to seal it after the funeral. Inside the house, women cook. On the long veranda, several of the oldest male relatives, the ones who still know how, fold squares of paper into the flowers and birds that will be needed at the ceremony.

  Hatsuko had not wanted a Buddhist priest to be summoned to chant a service, since that had never been the custom in her family. Her mother and her sisters had always insisted on the pure, the old ways as they were practiced before Buddhism and Shinto invaded. So visitors simply come, one by one, to weep and bid farewell to the woman who’d given them back their lives after the war. After the final mourner, Hatsuko’s body is placed in the coffin she’d had made years before, and her knees are drawn up to her chest so that she might return to the womb of the earth in the correct manner.

  As the shadow of the banyan tree spreads long across the courtyard, and a cooling breeze from the East China Sea brings the scent of the ocean, the villagers gather in the place where their ancestors had once assembled to hear Hatsuko’s father read out the wishes of the emperor. As Hatsuko had asked, the village priestesses have donned their white robes and wait to carry out the ceremonies she has prescribed. The procession to the tomb is about to begin when two strangers arrive.

  Mitsue, delighted that the kami had succeeded in relaying her invitation through the drummer, greets the hāfu girl, who arrives with her mot
her, also a hāfu, but one who looks so Uchinānchu that Mitsue understands the spirits’ special interest in her daughter. Mitsue and the others are pleased that the mother, though a soldier with a soldier’s rigid bearing, speaks their dialect in an enchanting way, like a child, a well-mannered child who was taught the respectful ways to address her elders. When she introduces herself as Gena, the villagers whisper among themselves, impressed that the soldier’s mother had given her a name that means “silvery” in Japanese. They theorize that Silvery’s mother must have been at one with the kami to know that her daughter was going to be a warrior and wear bits of silver on a uniform. Silvery’s daughter, though, has an unpronounceable name that puzzles them until someone who spent years cutting cane in the Philippines tells them it means “light.” Whereupon Mitsue announces that the name Light is even more prescient than Silvery for a remarkable girl who would become an agent of the kami.

  As Silvery speaks, Mitsue is overcome by the feeling that she knows this woman soldier. Or, at the very least, that she reminds her strongly of someone she knows but can’t quite recall. Mitsue is still trying to place the frustratingly elusive memory when Silvery tells the gathered villagers that she is sorry for intruding; it was her daughter’s crazy idea. Mitsue rushes to assure her that she and her daughter are very welcome. That, in fact, she went to a great deal of trouble to invite Light. Her daughter is an exceptional young woman, she adds. One clearly blessed by the kami.

  All eyes turn to the special girl Light as the others beam an approval that needs no translation. Their attention makes Light and her mother nervous. Silvery, who appears unused to hearing her daughter praised and, seeming not to believe that they are truly wanted, continues apologizing. Consulting frequently with a dictionary on her phone, Silvery explains in the babyish way so at odds with her crisp, bluish-gray camouflage uniform that her older daughter was killed recently and that Light has taken her sister’s death very hard. She says that Light insisted on coming here today because the online grief counselor who is mentoring her through the stages of grief had ordered her to come. None of the villagers know what an “online grief counselor” is. Silvery consults the dictionary on her phone several times and pieces together a translation.