Above the East China Sea: A Novel (13 page)

I grinned at Hatsuko’s wicked comment. It was true. Fumiko washed her hair with hand soap and it always puffed out around her head like a fierce guardian dog’s. Hatsuko covered her own grin with her hand in the refined manner of a proper Japanese girl, reminding me to do the same. We giggled in the sophisticated way she’d learned at school, making a high-pitched, silvery sound as pleasing as the ringing of tiny silver bells.

Later, at breakfast, the three of us, me, Hatsuko, and my father, knelt at the foot-high table where the treats my mother had prepared in advance for this special day were laid out for us. Sea-snake soup, always eaten for courage; bright pink, spicy
tofuyu;
sweet potato with green-tea sauce; deep-fried whale tripe in peanut sauce; and my favorite,
gōyā chanpuru,
made with bitter melon, pork, and tofu.

It was quiet and a bit lonely with my brothers gone. I even missed my mother, who had gone to the fields early so that she could finish the day’s work in time to be by my side when the names were read. As annoying and uncultured as her loud, braying laugh and insistence on speaking our native dialect were, the morning felt leaden, almost ominous, without them.

I studied my father’s face. His spectacles caught the early morning light and turned them into two circles of silver hiding his eyes. He had known since yesterday whether or not my name was on the list. Hatsuko saw me peering intently at Father and shook her head at my foolishness; of course he would reveal nothing. Until the names were read, I would not know whether he was hiding pride at my acceptance or humiliation that I had been rejected. Unlike so many of our uncivilized relatives and neighbors, whose every feeling was allowed to play across their broad, brown faces, my father had mastered the fine Japanese art of masking all show of untoward emotion.

Father held up his chopsticks horizontally. We all bowed our heads and said the blessing with him,
“Itadakimasu”
—“I gratefully accept”—then began our meal.

I had given up on Father betraying the tiniest hint as to what fate had in store for me when I noticed something that turned my belly to ice: As he lifted his bowl of soup, his hand trembled. His hand had not ever trembled before on any of the other mornings when he knew in advance that the names of his children
were
on the list of those admitted to high school.

Hatsuko’s own hand reaching for her chopsticks halted as we both stared at that telltale quiver. Her eyes, wide now with distress, found mine. My sister’s reaction confirmed what I feared most: My name was
not
on the list. I would
not
be going on to high school.

Reflected in my own bowl of sea-snake soup, I saw my future self: skin like my mother’s—tough and brown as ox hide—married to a farmer with brown teeth rotted away from sucking on black sugar and stinking from never cleaning himself properly after doing his business into a pigsty.

Heartbroken, our dream of teaching together vanished, neither Hatsuko nor I could force down a single bite of the delicacies my mother had prepared. My tears dropped without a sound into the bowl as I
lowered my head, accepted that my name was not on the list, and whispered,
“Itadakimasu.”

FIFTEEN

When he finished his meal, our father carefully replaced his chopsticks, stood, and nodded once at Hatsuko to indicate that it was time. We both trailed him out to the veranda. I copied Hatsuko and walked in the delicate, pigeon-toed way of a true Japanese girl, rather than the splay-footed manner of an Okinawan peasant. On the veranda, we followed our assigned roles. As I always did before he appeared at any public function, I trimmed our father’s steel gray hair with the pair of long-bladed silver scissors kept for this precise purpose. Hatsuko stood up tall and elegant, and, swallowing the ashen lump of disappointment that I’m certain was choking her as badly as the one blocking my throat, she began to recite the Imperial Rescript on Education.

The silver blades in my hand flashed against my father’s silver hair as Hatsuko recited the words that every Japanese schoolchild knew by heart. I tried to draw strength from our former emperor’s wisdom to face the disgrace that awaited me.

Know ye, Our subjects:

Our Imperial Ancestors have founded Our Empire on a basis broad and everlasting.

A fly buzzed about my father’s head, but his attention was so focused on the words of the Emperor Meiji that he did not sweep it away. A tear slid silently down my sister’s cheek, yet I felt her making her leaden heart as pure as possible as she poured it into her recitation.

Ye, Our subjects, be filial to your parents, affectionate to your brothers and sisters; as husbands and wives be harmonious, as friends true; bear yourselves in modesty and moderation … always respect the Constitution and observe the laws; should emergency arise, offer yourselves courageously to the State; and thus
guard and maintain the prosperity of Our Imperial Throne coeval with heaven and earth.

Though it didn’t seem possible, my father stiffened his spine even further than it already was, and I knew that he was steeling himself to accept the blow to his honor that was to come. The certain knowledge that our Emperor Hirohito, one hundred and twenty-fourth holder of the Chrysanthemum Throne, was a god, descended in an unbroken line from the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu, who brought light to the world, and that his every act and thought were blessed by heaven, made all hardships endurable. I focused on how trivial my sorrow was in comparison to the threat that our dear Father Emperor was now facing from the despotic Western powers. The emperor’s divinity eased our worries: my father’s about his three sons, Hatsuko’s and mine about our brothers.

Really, it was silly to worry. In school we had learned that never in history had foreign soldiers invaded Japan. Kublai Khan had tried in 1281, but a
kamikaze,
a divine wind, had arisen to destroy the mighty Khan’s fleet, a naval force five times as large as the Spanish Armada would be some three centuries later. As long as the Sun Goddess’s descendant sat on the Chrysanthemum Throne, no enemy could harm our sons or brothers defending him. Though I would not serve our glorious cause as an educated subject, I would do my best to bring honor to my family and to our emperor no matter what my destiny might be.

“Oh, Father,” Hatsuko called out, startling me. “What has Tamiko done?”

Blood dripped from the tip of Father’s ear in a steady stream down the side of his face and onto the collar of his
yukata.
I had nipped the tender flesh of his ear. Our father had not uttered one sound, one word, not of pain or of reproach. Instead, he pressed his handkerchief against the wound, and, without a word or glance in my direction, took the scissors from my hand and gave them to Hatsuko. I sank into myself as Hatsuko finished the job I had botched.

A few hours later, all the inhabitants of our village had gathered in our courtyard. It was rare that they’d all stopped work this way. Everyone’s workdays had grown longer, since Tokyo needed every sen we could provide to help in the fight against the Western imperialists. And, since we were such a backward place that required so much additional
administration, we were taxed twice what other prefectures were. Many of the lazier farmers claimed that these necessary taxes were bankrupting them. I smelled them now, their sweat, the stink of night soil from their fields, as all the other villagers crowded in next to me in the courtyard of my family’s house while we waited for my father to speak. I shuddered at the thought that I would be condemned to marry one of their sons. Father and Hatsuko stood on the long veranda that ran the length of our house. The ear I had cut was covered with white gauze. The noonday sun grew hot on our heads and the drone of the cicadas rose to an unbearable pitch.

On the shaded veranda, Hatsuko cradled a case made of
hinoki
wood, the whitest and holiest of all woods, for it contained the photo of our father, the emperor. Usually it was safeguarded inside the
hōanden
built in the yard of our school, where we could bow to it each day, but today was special, and, with great care, the photo had been transported here to watch over the proceedings. With great solemnity, Father put on a pair of white gloves, then carefully took the case of pale wood from Hatsuko. Since none of us was worthy of gazing upon the emperor’s image, we all bowed our heads even before he could unlatch the case.

My twin cousins, Shinsei and Uei, stood beside me, heads lowered. The acrid scent of their nervousness wafted over to me. They were good students, but they had both been caught too many times speaking
Uchināguchi,
and been punished with whippings and by having to wear the humiliating “dialect tag” on strings around their necks that they couldn’t remove until they caught someone else using our backward language. Those infractions would eliminate them from consideration; they would not be going on to high school either. Like mine, their lives would end in our small village. I wanted to reach out and take my old friends by their hands, to stand next to them as we endured our shame together. But it had been many years since we’d fought with screw pine swords or slid down hills of silvery
susuki
grass. Not since Hatsuko had explained to me how coarse and Okinawan it was for boys and girls to play together. She had shared what she’d learned in her Moral Education class about how making love was a painful duty that a wife endured for the sake of her husband. And until a suitable marriage was arranged, a girl had to remain a model of Japanese purity. That meant no contact with boys whatsoever. No talking, no exchanging
notes, and, if I really wanted to be above reproach, I wouldn’t even look at a boy. I didn’t know whether this applied to cousins, but I didn’t want to take any chances.

A ripple ran through the silent crowd as everyone shifted to make way for a newcomer elbowing in from the rear. In loud
Uchināguchi,
she brayed out, “Excuse me, excuse me, I’m sorry I’m late.” Only one person would have the effrontery to speak out so coarsely in the presence of our emperor: my mother.

Of course, Mother’s favorite sister, Aunt Junko, was with her, along with Aunt Junko’s grown daughter, Chiiko, and the youngest of Chiiko’s three children, Kazumi, a baby girl as sweet-tempered as her mother. Kazumi was so pink and tiny that we all called her Little Mouse. Little Mouse, strapped to Chiiko’s back, popped her head up above her mother’s shoulder.

Hatsuko lowered her head in shame as our famously bigmouthed mother stopped to address one of our neighbors. “Tokashiki-san, old friend, it’s all your fault that I’m late, you know. Your bull escaped and tried to mount our old water buffalo, Papaya. We had our hands full getting that randy devil off of her. Does he take after you? I’ll have to ask your wife.”

I started to laugh, but the sight of that courtyard filled with farmers and their wives hooting, exposing mouths full of blackened or missing teeth, stopped me. I did not want to be one of them. I creased my lips into a hard line of censure and glanced up at Hatsuko. She gave me the tiniest nod of approval.

“Make way for my fat behind; I want to stand with my second daughter, Tamiko, when her name is read out.”

She didn’t know my name wouldn’t be read. Apparently Father didn’t consider her worthy of sharing even this disgrace. It was probably all her fault that I hadn’t been admitted. Who wanted a girl with a mother who joked publicly about animals mating? It was all so typically Okinawan. I burned with humiliation as my mother shoved her way in next to me. Beneath her work trousers, tied at the ankles, her broad, leathery feet were bare and spattered with stinking night soil. Just as mine now would be for all the rest of my life.

My head still bowed, I heard Father snap the
hinoki
wood case closed; our emperor could not be subjected to such crass insolence. If Mother
had been anyone else it would have been Father’s duty to either beat her bloody for such a show of disrespect or to turn her in to the Japanese authorities. People had been executed for lesser crimes. For a second, the air around me crackled with Father’s rage, and I glanced up, fearing that this time,
Anmā
had gone too far. But only the muscles bunching and unbunching at Father’s jaw betrayed his fury. That and the blossom of blood as red as a
deigo
flower that bloomed anew on the white gauze covering his cut ear.