Above the East China Sea: A novel

by Sarah Bird

  Nearly starved, dehydrated, weak as a kitten, she was close to death when my father found her. He was a Japanese private who covered her mouth and called out the emperor’s name as he finished. When he was through using her, the soldier, instead of taking his hand away and letting Anmā go, pressed it down harder, as though she were the cause of his and Japan’s disgrace. He pressed with both hands until her nose and mouth were covered. At the realization that he was killing her, my mother’s spirit returned with a raging fury determined that no mainland bully was going to take another thing from her. Certainly not her life. Little Guppy bit down on the lump of flesh at the base of the private’s thumb so hard that she severed the tendon, causing the finger to droop from his hand, forever unusable. She escaped while he howled in pain.

  Anmā met the second of my fathers as she squatted beside a stream and washed away the soldier’s blood from her face and her own from the inside of her thighs. This father was an Okinawan boy barely older than she. He spoke to her in their language and begged for forgiveness and wept as he did what he did. Anmā, squashed against the earth, reached out a hand, found a rock, and left that father unconscious.

  Anmā met the last of my fathers when a typhoon descended on the island. When the howling winds hurled uprooted trees, sections of chain-link fence, and rusted truck doors sideways through the air, Anmā sought protection in an abandoned tomb. In the dark, she didn’t realize that the tomb already had an occupant. He was an American giant with a long nose and goat eyes. She could no more have resisted a monster nearly three times her size than she could have battled the typhoon raging outside. When it was over, he scurried away when a fraught calm descended as the eye of the storm passed over.

  Though there was no one else in the tomb, as the ferocity of the typhoon’s second act howled outside, Anmā realized that she was no longer alone. She knew I was with her. The giant had forgotten his pack of food. Inside the box, she found caramels, thick crackers, a package with four cigarettes, a tin with a key that peeled back the skin like an apple to reveal a rectangle of pink meat, and powders, one a bitter dark brown that dissolved on the tongue, the other yellow and salty with a vague taste of chicken fat. More than food, though, Anmā needed water, and, with many prayers of apologies, she emptied one of the oldest burial urns of its contents and placed it outside to collect rain. She quickly gathered enough to quench her thirst, then made herself eat and drink as much as her shrunken stomach could hold, while she whispered to me, “Nuchi du takara. Nuchi du takara.”

  Anmā remained alive for me. Later, when she felt me flip and frolic within her, she rejoiced. Hundreds, thousands of other girls chose differently. Especially the ones raped by the invaders. Those girls drank tea brewed from camphor wood leaves, had cones of mugwort burned on their bellies, or ate the fruit of the sago palm to kill the unwanted child they carried. Or themselves. Many no longer cared which. Others took their newborns to the sea and let the waves carry their shame away. Anmā, though, she loved me from the first second that I existed within her. She ceased mourning for all who had been lost. I was her consolation, her companion and hope on a hard road. I was her family.

  The retreating Japanese army drove us farther and farther south, until at last we refugees came to the sea. We huddled by the thousands on the beach in the shade of the high cliffs. There we waited, trapped by the ocean in front of us and impenetrable thickets of Devil’s Claw bushes with thorns cruel as barbed wire on either side. Japanese soldiers perched like black crows on the cliffs above us yelled down threats that they would kill anyone who might shame them by surrendering. They made good on their promise when five of our group waded into the water and tried to swim to the American ships that surrounded us. When the steady waves lifted the swimmers up, the Japanese soldiers shot them, one after another.

  The heat was monstrous. There was no water. As the sun rose, the shade receded, and the killing rays stalked us across the blistering sand as relentlessly as a hunter his prey. Anmā had saved one of the Americans’ thick crackers, and so that I might survive, she tried to eat it. She chewed but couldn’t swallow. She opened her parched mouth and the crumbs, dry as sand, fell out. From that moment on, I lost the strength to move within her and was still. Anmā knew that unless she did something, we both would die violent deaths that would condemn us to haunt this terrible place forever. That we would never be released to join our ancestors. The only way to avoid such imprisonment was suicide.

  On the last day, a girl of five, driven mad by thirst, ran into the waves and drank salt water. She died that night, convulsed in agonizing seizures. While all attention was on the dying child and her wailing mother, Anmā crept away from the group and entered the thicket of Devil’s Claw bushes.

  The thorns slashed at her like a thousand knives. Blood twisted down her arms and legs and dried there in black streaks, but she pressed on. By inching forward and ignoring the pain, Anmā made a tortoise’s progress toward escape. She had fought her way halfway through the thorned maze when she heard a roaring and smelled kerosene: The Americans had come with their flamethrowers and were burning the thicket. Shrieks tore the black air as flames ignited others hidden in the bushes. The fires encircled us. Searing waves of heat washed over us. Anmā coughed and her hand came away covered in blood. We were now certain to die a death so terrible that our souls would be trapped in this hellish place forever. Anmā clapped her hands to catch the attention of the kami, especially Old Jug, and prayed as the burning air smelling of human flesh being roasted singed her lungs and the flames drew closer.

  The kami directed her to climb. Though she barely had enough strength left to walk, she obeyed and climbed. My mother clawed her way to the winding trail, away from the beach, and climbed. Up the black cliff. Up above the black smoke. Higher and higher she went, until the blazing thicket was only an ember and the ocean a dark shimmer far below us.

  At the top of the cliff, the ten thousand souls who had already killed themselves—whether forced or willing—rose up and greeted us. Anmā took a few moments to bid farewell to the island she had so loved, before she stepped into the arms of the waiting spirits. We fell then into the long, dark dream that is ending now. Thanks to the ceremonies Mitsue and others performed, my mother and I have completed our journey to the next world. We are kami-sama.

  For the first time, I have senses and they all come alive. I feel a cool, soft breeze against my skin. I smell for the first time, and the scents of lily and pineapple fill my nostrils. A sanshin plays in the distance and, up close, right next to my ear, I hear the sound of my mother’s heartbeat. I open my eyes. My first sight is the lapis lazuli air shimmering around me. The second is my mother’s face. It is a good face.

  She asks me, “Child, why do you stay here with your mother?” I try to remember how I arrived in this perfect place, to snatch back bits and pieces of the long time of the dark dream from before, but they are already disappearing like rain puddles drying in the sun, and we have always been here. She pushes me from her lap. “Go. Run and play.”

  I have always been a strong, healthy boy, and my twin cousins, my best friends, Shinsei and Uei, who call out for me to join them, have always been waiting for me. I run off on my fast, sturdy legs and everything is just as it was in Anmā’s memories. We pluck the straightest boughs we can find from a screw pine tree to make fine samurai swords and fight a fierce battle. We trap banana spiders bigger than a man’s hand and have a race. We slide down a hill of sweet-smelling susuki grass and never worry that habu vipers might be hiding beneath the silvery blades.

  When I look back, Anmā is wearing the uniform of the schoolgirl she once was and now will be forever, and she is running toward the house where she grew up, where her sister, my aunt Hatsuko, holds her arms open wide in welcome. My aunt says, “Little Guppy, my Little Guppy,” over and over. They hold each other’s faces in their hands and weep. Every tear traps a sad memory, and when all are shed, the sadness has evaporated and the sisters take their place
s on the long veranda of the house where they grew up.

  In the courtyard, beneath the vast roof of a banyan tree, all 2,046 ancestors from ten generations back gather to feast on pigs’ ears in vinegar, sweet potato in green-tea sauce, stir-fried bitter melon, and pork stewed in squid’s ink washed down with cold wheat tea sweetened with black sugar for the children and millet brandy for the adults. My legendary great-great-great-grandfather Ryō plucks tunes from his sanshin. Everyone claps as Cousin Zenko and Uncle Shima dance their clumsy dances. My uncle Ichirō, Forest Orchid Boy, laughs as his lover, Nobuko, puts the panama hat she has woven on their child’s head.

  The timid dwarf deer, drawn by our merriment, tiptoe out of the forest. Emerald frogs, long-haired mice, and clouds of orchid-leaf butterflies also join us. A chartreuse-spotted monkey lizard skitters across my foot. Suddenly I recall the most important question and run back to the veranda to ask it before it slips away forever from my memory.

  “Anmā, when will I be born?”

  “What? Don’t say that. Don’t talk about leaving when we have only finally gotten here. Go. Play with your cousins.”

  “No, little sister,” Aunt Hatsuko interrupts, “the child is right.”

  “Right? To ask to leave paradise? To suffer as we suffered?”

  “And to taste desire like a shiny coin in your mouth? And to work until the blood sings in his muscles? And to breathe the breaths exhaled by his own child?”

  “How much of that did we have?”

  “Enough, sister. Enough. We had life; we had the treasure.”

  “No, I can’t allow it. There is too much pain. I won’t see my child suffer.”

  “It is not for you to decide. The kami have already spoken through him.”

  “But aren’t we kami now?”

  “Sister, it is the child’s turn.”

  “But whom will he be born to? How will it be arranged?”

  “I know who will arrange it.”

  “Who?”

  “Cousin Chiiko.”

  “Aunt Junko’s daughter? My second mother who carried me everywhere on her back? Did she survive the war?”

  “Oh, no, she was hanged by the Japanese a short time after you left for Shuri. The Japanese claimed she was a spy, because she screamed at the soldiers quartered in her house and whacked them with her broom after they killed and roasted her last chicken.”

  Anmā laughs. “Just like Aunt Junko. She would say anything to anyone. Remember how Father used to say it was because of the gap between their front teeth? How that opening let all the foolish words in their heads spill out?”

  “See, she’s just over there.”

  “What happened to her children?”

  “They’re here as well. After she was hanged, all her children were orphaned, since their father never returned from Manchukuo.”

  “Even Little Mouse? Kazumi, the sweetest baby anyone ever saw?”

  “She was the only one who survived the war.”

  “You can’t possibly be thinking of her to be my son’s mother.”

  “No, of course not. Don’t be silly. Little Mouse died quite some time ago, an old woman, alone in a foreign country, never knowing who her mother was. It is Mouse’s granddaughter who might be a perfect mother for your son. I actually met the young woman. A remarkable girl. Favored by the kami. She reminded me of you. Why, I’ve even met the young man who will be the father. I promise you, sister, you couldn’t do any better. Shall we speak to Chiiko and Little Mouse about arranging it? They’re over there with Aunt Junko.”

  “I will speak to her, Hat-chan, but that is all. I make no promises.”

  “Oh, when did my Little Guppy become so serious? Come along.”

  My mother and Aunt Hatsuko go to join their aunt Junko and cousin Chiiko. Junko and Chiiko are eating salted gōyā melon seeds and spitting the hulls out between the gaps in their front teeth. With their free hands, they both pat and stroke the young woman sitting between them, who must be Chiiko’s orphaned daughter, once the happy toddler Little Mouse. Little Mouse’s back is to me, but she is dressed like an American, wearing a tight pink sweater that hugs her waist. The women put their heads together, and I know that they are arranging with Mouse for me to be born to her granddaughter.

  Aunt Hatsuko points toward me, and Mouse in her pink sweater turns around. She has a kind face, a good face for a great-grandmother. Her black hair rises into a bubble held back from her broad forehead by a shiny band of ribbon. Her eyes are thickly lined, and on her lips is a pink so pale it is almost white. When she smiles, a gap between her front teeth, just like her mother’s and her grandmother’s, is revealed.

  As I wonder what her granddaughter, the one who will be my mother, is like, a curly-haired young woman dressed in an American military uniform enters the courtyard and is welcomed into our family. The young woman wears a crisp blue blouse decorated with colorful rectangles over her heart. On her shoulders are silver chevrons as perfect as a bird’s wings rising in flight. In her hand she carries a patchwork square of soft fabric in pretty pastel colors that would be ideal for wrapping a baby in. Obviously I won’t be that baby, and this young woman won’t be my mother, since she is no longer among the living.

  Mouse gathers the girl into her arms, buries her face in the cushion of dark curls on the young woman’s head, and kisses every one. It is made known to me that it is this young woman’s sister whom they are thinking of to be my mother. I like the looks of her enough to believe that, when the time is right, her sister will make a suitable mother.

  With that decided, I run off after my cousins. At the top of a gentle hill, I pause and look back down. The women on the veranda are lost in conversation. Aunt Hatsuko tells my mother that she was a Princess Lily girl all along, that her name was on the list that their father never finished reading. At this, my mother gives a deep sigh that releases her final breath of earth air, the last bit of sadness tethering her to the world of the living. A moment later, the two sisters, laughing about how fat and greasy Nakamura ended up becoming, tilt so far over toward each other that the pins on their chests touch, the drooping head of one flower touching the drooping head of the other. From where I stand, at the moment that the two lilies meet it looks as if together they form one complete heart.

  A screw pine sword slashes the air next to my ear, and then makes a wobbly stab at my belly. I whirl around, hoist my weapon, and chase after my cousins, pelting them with rotten loquats as I run up the hill, into the shimmering air.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This novel began in 1970 when I was an Air Force dependent strolling around the vast green fairways of a golf course at Kadena Air Base, and I wondered, Why, on this tiny island where everyone off base is so cramped together, do we get all this space to play a game? The list of those who helped me find answers to that question is long. First among them is Steve Rabson, professor emeritus of East Asian Studies at Brown University and a gift sent by the kami to help me get it right. His writing about Okinawa and his impeccable translations of the island’s literature and poetry, particularly the short story collection he coedited, Southern Exposure: Modern Japanese Literature from Okinawa, were essential.

  Of the hundreds of sources I used, I have to single out several extraordinary first-person narratives: A Princess Lily of the Ryukus by Jo Nobuko Martin and The Girl with the White Flag by Tomiko Higa are deeply moving accounts by native girls who survived the horrors of the Battle of Okinawa. From Okinawa to the Americas by Hana Yamagawa provided a rare glimpse into island life before the war. The work of the legendary Chalmers Johnson, starting with Okinawa: Cold War Island, was of great help to me in appreciating the unique role Okinawa plays in the American empire.

  For educating me about contemporary Okinawa, I’d like to thank Tomoe Yokoda and James Matej of the Okinawan Cultural Association of Texas; Christy Nogra, currently stationed at Kadena; and my eleventh-hour hero, Jim Kassebaum, chief marketing officer for Marine Corps Community Services Okinawa,
who told me what I needed to know about Kadena Air Base as it is today. Another gift sent by the kami was the performer and scholar Byron Fija, whose dedication to keeping the Okinawan language alive inspires me.

  Muchisimas gracias to my talented friend Christy Krames for transforming the geography of my imagination into maps as artful as they are accurate.

  I thank my indispensable readers for their insights and expertise: Carol Dawson, who, through all the iterations, kept asking the crucial questions; Mary Edwards Wertsch, friend and author who wrote our people’s handbook, Military Brats; Kathleen Orillion and Carol Flake, always generous, always intuitive; Nancy Mims, who infused the work with an artist’s empathy; Stephen Harrigan and Elizabeth Crook, who never fail to provide wise counsel; and Tiffany Yates-Martin, who continues to be the coolest copy editor. Ever. Special dollops of gratitude go to my sisters and best readers, Martha and Kay Bird, brave and noble brats who, along with brothers John, Tom, and Steve, were the bubble of air that kept me alive through all the moves.

  For the fifth time in a row, I am the luckiest author around to have the privilege of working with the paragons of publishing at Alfred A. Knopf: Kim Thornton, Annie Eggers, Christine Gillespie, Gabriele Wilson, Kathleen Fridella, Peggy Samedi, and Maggie Hinders. I am grateful for your talent, taste, enthusiasm, and dedication. I can never truly thank my editor, the magnificent Ann Close, for the imperceptible magic she always works which, somehow, transforms impossible messes into books. The radiant spirit of Nina Bourne hovers around all of you.