Above the East China Sea: A Novel by Sarah Bird

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 Ilowered 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 thusguard 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,