Above the East China Sea: A novel

by Sarah Bird

  Jake takes out all the change he has in his pockets and neatly arranges the coins at the edge of the shrine. I take off the opal necklace that Codie gave me and put it next to the coins. Jake nods approval. The loneliness that has haunted me since Codie died disappears. It’s like the good moment in Murder House and, for once, I feel as if I am exactly where I am supposed to be.

  Jake tips his chin toward the candles. “Tell them what you need.”

  “Don’t they already know?”

  “No, this isn’t like the Christian god who’s everywhere and knows everything. You have to tell them.”

  I think about what an idiot I’ll feel like, speaking to the spirits of the Deigo Tree Golf Course. But one glance at Jake, kneeling beside me, his hands folded, who has shared a secret that could destroy his family, and that fear leaves. “I need help—”

  “Get their attention first,” Jake interrupts. He mimes clapping.

  I clap several times, then begin again. “I would like your help to find out what my sister—”

  “Tell them her name, your mom’s name, and your Okinawan grandmother’s name.”

  “My sister is Codie James.” I like the kami. I like that Codie is in the present tense with them. “My mother was born Gena Overholt. Now James. Oh, I forgot to introduce myself. I’m Luz James. My grandmother was Setsuko Overholt. She’s Okinawan. Her Okinawan name was Setsuko Uehara. I need to know what I’m supposed to do.”

  I stop then because what I really want to ask the kami about is the girl in the cave. But even here, I can’t reveal the full extent of that disturbing vision. Instead, I take the crumpled envelope from my bag, put it down on the cement, and say, “This is the phone number for a yuta. Since they’re supposed to be able to communicate with the … those who are gone, maybe you know whether my mother consulted this person. Maybe you know why. Maybe this yuta knows what I’m supposed to do.” I look over to Jake.

  “State the problem,” he advises.

  “Should I see the yuta? Will this person be able to help me? What if this yuta only speaks Japanese?” I glance over at Jake. “Now what?”

  “Now we pray.”

  “Out loud?”

  “However you want.”

  “And then?”

  “We wait until they put the answer in our hearts.”

  I don’t know how long we kneel in front of the shrine. Long enough for the sky to lighten to a pearly gray and for streaks of apricot to appear along the eastern horizon.

  When he finally stands, Jake picks up the envelope, puts it in his pocket, says, “We’d better get a few hours’ sleep. We’ll need to be rested tomorrow. I’ll make the appointment.”

  Before I can ask any more questions, Jake’s phone buzzes. He checks it and says one word, “Pilgrims.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Back in our sleeping cave that evening, I said nothing about the Yamato being sunk and the fleet destroyed. The others probably already know of this tragedy and have been showing true Japanese spirit by not giving voice to such gloomy information. Hatsuko and our friends were unusually quiet and somber; their first day as student nurses must have been as shocking and unsettling as mine had. My sister, however, was the most demoralized. Like the rest of us, Hatsuko had lost weight, but even beyond that, she seemed to be shriveling into a smaller, more frightened person. I tried to coax a smile out of her by saying that it was lucky we’d grown up on a farm with goats and pigs, so that men and their odors weren’t such a surprise to us.

  Miyoko and Sachiko perked up at this touch of levity. Sachiko, her nose wrinkled in disgust, finally felt free to ask, “Did you have to touch their … you know? Down there.”

  This triggered nervous giggles as we realized that we’d all had to endure the same humiliation. The only one who denied herself the release of our shared humor was the one I’d intended it for, my sister. “Don’t laugh at the emperor’s soldiers,” she snapped at me. “How would you like it if some nurse in the Philippines or Manchukuo mocked our brothers in this way?”

  Too late I remembered that Hatsuko had always been excused from cleaning the goat pen and feeding the pigs because the smell alone would make her vomit. I could only imagine how badly what my sensitive sister had experienced that day had affected her.

  A bit later, a skinny corporal poked his head into our cave and barked out the order that a new mess had been established to handle the influx of patients and soldiers, and that two of us were to come with him immediately to draw our rations for the day. I jumped up. “Hatsuko, come with me. The air will do us both good.”

  Hatsuko refused with a weary shake of her head and continued scratching listlessly at the lice tormenting her.

  “Mitsue?” I asked. I knew that this day must have been particularly hard on her as well, what with being around so many soldiers who surely reminded her of her dead fiancé. Always struggling to be pleasant, in spite of her sorrow, Mitsue agreed to come with me.

  The new kitchen was a fifteen-minute walk away. It had been erected next to a cave that contained a natural spring. There was already a long line when we arrived. As we waited, wooden tubs so huge that they required three men to carry them were hauled out from the cave kitchen to the distribution shack. In the shack a portly mess sergeant with a voice harsh as a crow’s squawk yelled orders. His underlings, their faces flushed from the steaming tubs, used shovels to dump rice into the ration pails of those ahead of us.

  Mitsue and I each held a pail. Our job was to collect enough rice for the fifty of us in our cave. I was glad that Mitsue had agreed to accompany me; we always received generous portions when she was by my side.

  Though it was lovely to be outside on a perfect day in late spring and to feel the sun on my face, I couldn’t stop worrying about my sister; she didn’t have my ability to put unpleasant thoughts out of her head.

  There was always one of two side dishes to accompany the rice, either seaweed or bean paste. I hoped that today we would have bean paste, since Hatsuko preferred it. Somehow I’d try to wangle an extra serving for her. I wanted my strong, noble big sister back, and whispered a prayer for help to Old Jug, the ancestor who Anmā maintained had always taken an interest in our family.

  Just as I finished, a group of the newly arrived officers ambled in, talking and joking among themselves. Officers never appeared in the mess line, and we all stiffened at the sight of their swords glinting in the sun. Since their rations were delivered to them, they were obviously simply out for a stroll. In the middle of the group I glimpsed Lieutenant Nakamura and was seized by the certainty that Old Jug had brought him to me in answer to my prayer.

  “Lieutenant Nakamura!” I called out.

  “What are you doing?” Mitsue hissed, horrified that I was addressing an officer. Everyone’s attention snapped my way at this breach of protocol. Nakamura looked over at us. I shoved my pail into Mitsue’s free hand, hissed, “Please, cousin, play along. This is for our Hatsuko,” and hurried over to the lieutenant.

  Fortunately, either Nakamura wasn’t as rigid as most of the officers, who gave me fierce scowls, or my guppy face amused him, because he regarded me with a kindly expression as I approached. Bowing deeply, I blurted out the mission I had fabricated. “Please, sir, forgive this impertinent intrusion, but yours is the only name I happen to know, and I am in desperate need of assistance.”

  “ ‘Desperate’?” he repeated with the hint of a smile.

  “Yes, yes, if you could, please come this way.” With a shrug toward his friends, Nakamura followed me back to Mitsue, whose expression had gone from puzzlement to annoyance. “My friend needs help carrying our rations back to the others in our chamber,” I explained. “A dire necessity is forcing me to leave. Immediately.”

  He understood at once; dysentery was sweeping the caves. I took my bucket from Mitsue and shoved it into Nakamura’s hands.

  Mitsue grabbed it back and snapped, “I don’t need any help.”

  I couldn’t believe that my cousin was s
o wrapped up in grief for her dead fiancé that she wouldn’t help me out. Fortunately, the gallant lieutenant held out his hand and said, “Please, I insist. It would be my honor to aid you in this small matter, Miss Shimojo.”

  I was encouraged that, somehow, he already knew Mitsue’s name. Still, my cousin hesitated for a long moment and heaved an impatient sigh before she finally handed the bucket over to the lieutenant. At that, I darted off with an urgency that lent credibility to my story. I ran all the way back to our cave, entered breathless, and yelled to Hatsuko, “Quickly! Get ready. Lieutenant Nakamura is coming.”

  For several seconds, my sister sat frozen, staring at me. When she saw from my expression that Nakamura truly was about to appear, it was as though a current that had been switched off was turned back on. She asked me whether there were any specks of soot on her face from the oily kerosene smoke, and I used the edge of my blouse to clean them all away. Then Hatsuko scrambled about, begging the other girls for a few leaves of tea and some lumps of sugar. Somehow, she managed to have a cup of tea brewing when Nakamura, carrying both pails, arrived. Being the gentleman he was, he stopped and stood aside so that Mitsue might enter first.

  The lieutenant’s gaze followed my beautiful, bereaved cousin until he caught sight of my sister and saw what I saw: a magically pretty girl whose eyes sparkled and whose cheeks flushed pink as a rose. His bow was especially deep and respectful. My sister returned it, then tilted her head down and to the side, swept her hand with all the fingers pressed together so that it resembled the ivory petal of a lotus blossom, and bade the lieutenant to enter in a voice soft and high as a geisha’s. My heart burst with pride; no Japanese noblewoman could have been more elegant than my sister.

  Nakamura seated himself. We all knelt in a circle around him and watched the lieutenant drink his cup of tea. He slurped loudly to express his appreciation and compliment my sister, finishing with a sigh of satisfaction, as if he’d just consumed a banquet. Using only the tips of his joined fingers, he carefully passed the empty can his tea had been served in back to Hatsuko and asked, “If it pleases you, I should like to sing a song to express my gratitude.”

  We all clapped and begged him to sing, but he waited for Hatsuko’s permission. Eyes downcast, she nodded and the lieutenant sang.

  Whether I float as a corpse under the waters

  Or sink beneath the grasses of the mountainside,

  I will willingly die for the emperor!

  Nakamura’s voice, though slightly nasal, was pleasant enough. When he finished, all of us except Mitsue clapped and begged for another. I was pleased to see that Nakamura’s eyes instantly leaped to Hatsuko’s face to seek her approval. “Hatsuko, what do you think? Would you like another gunka to bolster our spirits?”

  “Of course,” she implored, her voice, filled with new, high trills and a soft breathiness, sounding strange to me. “Your patriotic songs are a gift to us. They are strengthening our love for our emperor.”

  “As you wish,” Nakamura answered in the old-fashioned, formal way that many officers adopted. His voice, however, was strong and direct as he sang.

  Fields burn up, and the time to exterminate has come!

  Wipe out all vicious Americans and Britons!

  These mountains must be our foe’s tombs and monuments!

  After singing all the gunka he knew, the lieutenant asked, “Would you girls like to see proof that we Japanese are destined to rule the world?”

  We all competed to show who could agree with the most eagerness.

  Nakamura waited for us to quiet down; then he carefully plucked an empty cigarette package from his pocket and held it up triumphantly. In the center of the small white package was the perfect red circle of a rising sun.

  “Lucky. Strike.” Nakamura touched each foreign word as he pronounced it. “Don’t you see? Even the enemy begs for our good fortune and power.”

  We bounced on our knees, clapped and shouted, “Banzai!” considerably buoyed up by the lieutenant’s proof of our invincibility. Before he left, his gaze swept the dark corners of the cave until he found Mitsue; when their eyes met, he bowed and my cousin dipped her head. I guessed that Mitsue must have told him about her dead fiancé and he was showing his respect for a fellow soldier in arms.

  When Nakamura was gone, all the girls except my sister and Mitsue whispered and giggled like silly children. Hatsuko merely sat with a faraway look on her face, so transported that she even stopped scratching. Mitsue simply sat apart, looking sad. I chastised myself for forcing her into my scheme; obviously Nakamura had brought up painful memories of her dead sweetheart. Still, I went to sleep that night happy that my plan had worked so well. A Lucky Strike, indeed!

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Over the next few weeks, Lieutenant Nakamura became a regular visitor to our cave. We needed the bit of cheer he offered, because our work in the wards grew ever more difficult and distasteful. The rooms carved into rock became crowded with patients, both those who had been wounded in battle and the far greater numbers disabled by typhus, dysentery, malaria, and dengue fever. When all the bed planks had been filled, patients were laid directly on the rocky ground. There was no medicine for any of them. No sulfa for infections. No morphine for pain.

  They all suffered, but the worst were the tetanus and gangrene patients. Those afflicted with tetanus would bite anything they could lay their hands on, whether it was a rag or another soldier. In the end, their jaws locked together so tightly that it was a struggle to pour a thin stream of water into their mouths, and they groaned deep in their throats as thirst drove them mad. The gangrene patients screamed in unbearable agony as their limbs turned dark and swelled grotesquely, before they finally went rigid and silent.

  Even as conditions deteriorated, and their patients needed them more than ever, the regular army nurses from Japan, like Tanaka, took to disappearing with greater and greater frequency. While their patients suffered unendurable agonies, those nurses simply left the wards and gathered secretly in a distant supply closet to smoke cigarettes that they rolled out of newspaper and pine needles. If one of us had the temerity to disturb them to ask whether they would administer an injection or change a dressing, these hard women, many of whom had been prostitutes before enlisting, would subject us to the harshest of tongue-lashings. None harsher than the ones delivered by Head Nurse Tanaka.

  No one dared bother Tanaka because of the rumors that she poisoned patients she found too disruptive. I tried not to believe this, but couldn’t help thinking of how the young private with dysentery who couldn’t control his bowels and constantly soiled himself had died so suddenly in his sleep. As had the gruff old sergeant who bellowed all day long for bedpans, water, food. As had the haughty captain who called Head Nurse a fat slob because, while all her patients were wasting away, she kept getting suspiciously plumper and plumper. He accused her of stealing her patients’ food and threatened to have her investigated. That night he, too, died in his sleep.

  I could dismiss the rumors that Head Nurse Tanaka was the cause of these deaths, until the roof of our cave collapsed. All of us escaped the cave-in except for a senior girl, Hanashiro, who was one of our best student nurses, renowned for her unfailing cheerfulness. We all worked furiously, bloodying our hands dragging rocks off of her, and, though we did succeed in saving our friend’s life, her brain had been damaged. From then on, Hanashiro would wander around with a vacant smile on her face, unable to work or even speak, squatting in front of us with no shame and relieving herself whenever she felt the need.

  In honor of the person Hanashiro had once been, we were all, even the officers, kind to her. The only one she seemed to bother was Head Nurse Tanaka, who would rail on about what a disgrace she was and how taxing it was that we all had to watch over Hanashiro so she wouldn’t hurt herself, and that, generally, she was a menace to the group. No one paid Head Nurse any attention, since she was always complaining about something. But one night, when Tanaka was on duty, Hanashiro, who was
perfectly healthy except for her brain, died in her sleep. From then on I stayed as far from Head Nurse as I could.

  TWENTY-NINE

  When we return to the front gate of the golf course, we find a group of a dozen Okinawans waiting. Jake exchanges a few words with them, then holds the gate open for the pilgrims who’d texted to let him know they were waiting to enter. “Go on ahead back to the house and get some sleep,” he tells me. “I’ve got to take them to the shrine, then lock up after they leave. It’ll be a while.”

  In the guest room, I clear a bunch of Jake’s little sister’s dolls off the futon. They look like a tribe of Barbies crossed with space aliens fully accessorized with tiny shoes and purses. I lie down, certain that I won’t be able to sleep.

  A second later, I’m wandering through a vast open meadow where bison, giraffes, and white cats wearing red capes nibble at the grass. I glance down, and at my feet is the gray-speckled linoleum that covered the floors of one of the three schools I attended when we moved so much during fourth grade. When I look back up, I’m standing in front of the class being introduced as the new girl. An iguana in a tall cage stares at me, one eye goggling forward, the other pivoting around to take in the back view.

  Codie appears and begins brushing her hair with a tiny silver fork. With each stroke, her curls and frizz straighten until her hair flows like satin around her head. In the next instant, our grandmother takes the fork and is combing the curls back into Codie’s hair. It is not the grandmother I knew, though. Instead, it’s Grandma Setsuko as she was in my favorite old photo of her. She’d told us that the black-and-white had been taken at an Okinawan club in the late sixties, early seventies, sometime around when she met my grandfather Eugene. Her eyes are thickly lined; her hair is ratted into a bubble that rises behind the shiny band of ribbon holding it back from the pouf of bangs that fall over her broad forehead. She is planted front and center, gazing adoringly up at the group playing onstage. They’re the band from the cover of her favorite album.