Above the East China Sea: A Novel (33 page)

THIRTY-THREE

“Damn, I forgot about all this mess,” Jake says when a man with a hard hat atop his scarf-wrapped head appears, waving a red flag on a stick, detouring traffic around the massive road construction project up ahead. The diverted traffic funnels into a clogged bypass.
“Back route,” Jake mutters before whipping a screeching U-turn that leaves drivers honking and swerving out of his way.

Jake switches on the radio. An Okinawan singer warbles out a tune, accompanied by several ukuleles. The song ends and two deejays, a man and a woman, come on. The man barks out aggressive sentences in Japanese. The woman giggles a lot as she chatters away in high-pitched baby talk. Whatever they’re bantering about makes Jake snort and shake his head. He stops laughing, though, when we come to a halt at a light next to a vending machine, with its perky sound track and
Close Encounters
lights selling drinks right next to a massive cement structure in the shape of a turtle shell.

“That is so wrong,” he mutters, speeding away. “I can’t believe the fucking Japanese put one of their fucking machines next to a family’s tomb.”

The fucking Japanese.
I try to figure out Jake’s animosity. Isn’t Okinawa a prefecture of Japan? Isn’t he Japanese? I don’t ask, but it’s like hearing a Californian, or an Iowan, talk about fucking Americans like they belonged to a whole other country. He snaps off the radio.

We make a bewildering number of turns until we’re in an Okinawa I’ve never seen before. The roads narrow and traffic dwindles to nothing. English disappears entirely from the signs. We pass through a succession of small towns and villages. Houses and businesses crowd in to the very edge of the road. Tanks for collecting water sit atop the flat roofs. Water rationing is in effect across the entire southern half of the island, with supplies being shut off entirely every other day. High concrete walls and bars across the windows protect buildings from the flying debris and wind damage of a possible typhoon. The rare traditional Okinawan house with a red-tiled roof and a pair of ceramic
shiisā
dogs guarding the gate stands out.

Big, round mirrors at intersections keep Jake from colliding with oncoming cars. Brightly lit vending machines pop up everywhere on an empty stretch of road beside a field planted with pineapple bushes. Next to a bus stop on a deserted stretch of road between two towns, we stop at a red light and the machine on the corner there chirps out a greeting to us in Japanese.

Jake’s back route leads to a road that hugs the eastern coastline off to our right. Waves break against a seawall protected by thousands of
loosely stacked, pyramid-shaped chunks of concrete. In the distance, immense freighters—black and rust monsters—inch across the far horizon. We climb a long hill that falls away steeply down to the ocean in a series of steep black cliffs. Beyond them the East China Sea glitters in the sun. The shifting aquas and jades darken to a hard Prussian blue where the Pacific stretches out toward China.

Naha appears. From a distance it looks like a city made of white building blocks. An armada of miniature vehicles and skinny men on scooters riding with their knees cocked out buzz past us. Traffic picks up on the multilane highway and we are swept into the surge flowing toward the capital of the Ryukyu Islands.

On the outskirts of the city, strip malls pop up. Mama-san stores selling dried squid jerky and
bentō
boxed lunches mix with Starbucks and McDonald’s. Two-headed speaker horns for typhoon alerts are nailed high on utility poles. A round, five-story emporium towers over the small businesses. It is crowned with tall letters that announce
SLOT & PACHINKO
.

As we move from the gray outskirts, the city rises up around us, bustling in a sunshiny, tropical way as the streets turn into wide boulevards lined with stately palms and broad sidewalks. Workers balancing on a scaffold seven floors above wear white hard hats and what look like long harem pants. A mailman with an official red lockbox above the rear wheel of his scooter weaves through traffic.

A big sign announces that we are on Okinawa’s Miracle Mile, Kokusai-dōri, International Street, heart of the shopping district. The city that was white from a distance is pastel at street level. Shops with clear plastic awnings cast candy-colored squares of pink, yellow, baby blue light onto the passersby strolling past. A two-story-tall, splay-footed green gecko wriggles up the side of a store. Jake parks in the first lot we come to.

I pay the attendant while Jake studies the address, consults his phone, gets oriented; then we head off. The stores nearby cater to Japanese tourists, offering a king’s ransom of Hello Kitty merchandise next to fierce rows of red clay
shiisā
dogs, all wearing sunglasses. Perched on the second floor of the souvenir store nearest us is a sculpture the size of a Dumpster of the Japanese lucky totem, a white cat with empty black eyes and big red ears. The cat with the dead eyes waves one motorized
paw, beckoning customers to enter. On my past trips to the Kokusai-dōri, the sidewalks have been packed. The Obon festival has emptied the town, and we stroll easily past stores, many of them closed, with signs in Japanese and English saying they’re off for the holiday.

We pass slender businessmen in white shirts tucked into black slacks, swarms of giggling, gossiping schoolgirls in pigtails pointing to clothes in store windows, and Japanese tourists in floppy hats and flowing cotton vacation clothes. They’re all dwarfed by the occasional American serviceman, hair too short, nose burned red.

I follow Jake onto a covered street that has a green sign accented with white doves arcing over the entrance. In the sign’s center, a translation of the characters—“Heiwa-dōri, Peace Street”—is printed in English. Inside, a high, vaulted skeleton of silvery steel, covered by a curved glass roof, encloses the maze of tiny shops and booths crammed together beneath it. Locals shuffling through the labyrinth in plastic shower shoes outnumber tourist shoppers. Shops sell more work clothes than aloha shirts and swim trunks. Dresses and trousers in easy-care polyesters cascade down in rows so high that shopkeepers have to use a long pole with a hook on the end to snag the garments their customers are interested in.

One business, however, a souvenir store, is a clear tourist destination. Shoppers examine lacquered sea turtles, branches of coral, and taxidermied
habu
snakes, fangs exposed, coiled up, ready to strike. The store is so well lit that the shoppers inside seem like part of a museum diorama. In this setting, it is easy to see how different the Japanese tourists pointing at bottles of
awamori
liquor with a
habu
snake curled up on the bottom are from the cheery Okinawan shopgirls bustling about them. The mainlanders are better dressed, taller, more angular, with narrower eyes. Mostly, though, they radiate a sense of entitled ease.

A kid about my age—obviously a base kid, from his slouchy, oversize jeans and Dallas Cowboys T-shirt—clutches one of the stuffed
habu
snakes as he sneaks up on his buddy, who is examining the fine assortment of shell figurines in shell hot rods, and pretends to sink the viper’s exposed fangs into his friend’s neck.

“Motherfucker!” his victim explodes, slapping his neck and whirling around to find the snake being poked into his face. He bats the snake out of his friend’s hands. “You asshole!”

The friend’s cackles echo up and down the alley. The Japanese tourists exchange looks of disapproval as the guys commence swatting at each other. Without a word, the nearest shopgirl carefully returns the discarded snake and shell figures to their proper places.

Farther on, Jake and I enter a bustling market filled with housewives buying food for the evening meal. Piles of silver fish with their scarlet flesh exposed sit next to packages of wrapped pig parts. Ears and entire pig faces are particularly popular.

“It’s just a little farther,” Jake assures me, as we step out of the enclosed arcade.

Outside the market, we find that the sun has disappeared and a light drizzle is falling. Vendors beyond the cover of the glass roof hurry to cover piles of purple sweet potatoes and a vegetable that looks like a shriveled, bumpy cucumber, with sheets of clear plastic. The rain beads up on the sheets and trickles in rivulets onto the pavement.

“What are we looking for?” I ask. Jake gives me the address and I search for a number. We are in the city’s backyard, surrounded by utility poles and high concrete walls covered with graffiti. The air is dense with the odor of fried food venting from the restaurants. The bright, tropical pastels have gone gray in the dismal light, and we could be in the anonymous urban heart of any city in the world.

Jake looks up and down the long alley, then back down at the address. “This can’t be right,” he concludes.

“What? You think I scared the
yuta
so much she sent us on a wild-goose chase?”

Jake shrugs; in other words, that’s exactly what he thinks. A kitchen worker, Okinawan, his spiky black hair held back with a headband, a dirty white apron wrapped around his waist, wheels a large trash can out. Jake shows him the address; they exchange a few words of Japanese. The worker, a kid really, maybe fifteen, considers. His perplexed expression and the way he points one way, then the other, do not give me hope. I glance around, frantic to find some sign that I haven’t hit a dead end. There has to be someone in this stinking alley who can help. An odd sense of urgency overtakes me, and I hurry off down the alley. The wind picks up, shifts direction, and a fresh breeze blows in from the ocean, sweeping the stale odors away.

“Luz, there’s nothing down there!” Jake calls after me.

I ignore him, and rush away, only to stop dead at the unexpected sight of a wooden fence covered with velvety purple morning glories. Atop the gateposts a pair of
shiisā
dogs glare down. A string of metal bells hangs from the latch. Inside the fence is a small courtyard and a bungalow tucked in the shadows behind a department store and a sushi restaurant. Above the door is a symbol carved in wood that exactly matches the whirling circle image, the crest of the ancient Ryukyu Kingdom, that Jake has tattooed around his biceps.

Jake catches up just as I’m about to open the gate. “Hang on. People around here keep crazy vicious guard dogs.”

“It’s okay,” I tell him. For reasons I don’t understand, I know that it is. I open the gate and step into the small courtyard. As soon as I do, the bustling city seems to fall silent and all I am aware of is the spicy, sweet scent of orchids from the potted plants on the porch. My heart races as I mount the porch steps ahead of Jake, almost as if Codie herself were waiting for me inside the little house. I’m convinced that the next-best thing is, though: a way to communicate with her. I’m so eager that my hand trembles as I rap on the door. I hold my breath and listen for sounds of footsteps, a door about to be answered. I hear nothing and rap again.

“Hang on,” Jake says, coming up behind me; he removes a note written in Japanese characters taped to the front door.

“What does it say?”

“She’s not here. She’s off celebrating Obon with her family.”

“Are you sure?”

Jake shakes his head. The same feeling I get every time I wake from a Codie dream to discover yet again that she’s gone overwhelms me, and my eyes fill. I almost trip hurrying back down the steps.

Jake follows. I try to run away; I can’t stop the tears and I can’t let him see them. His hand on my shoulder stops me. I duck my head as fast as I can.

“Luz.”

The tenderness, the pity in his voice undoes me. I feel my face start squirming around—chin trembling, lips twitching, eyes puddling—and squash it against his shoulder before he can see me losing control.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, his lips brushing against the top of my head. “I shouldn’t have built your hopes up. Without a more complete list of
your relatives, she probably couldn’t have told you anything even if she’d been there. No decent
yuta
could have. It might take a while, but I’m sure that with your mom’s help you can eventually put a better list together.”