Above the East China Sea: A Novel by Sarah Bird Page B

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 exchangingnotes, 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 Motherhad 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.
    Father gathered himself and read the first name on the list, Ritsuko Amuro. Just as Father started to read the second name, a loud noise boomed out and the ground beneath our feet shuddered.
    “Earthquake!” my mother shouted, and the crowd commenced to shriek and mill about like crazed geese. Women pulled their children flat onto the ground to wait for the next concussion. Our house shook in the thundering. In the goat shed, the horned male ran in panic around the post he was tied to, until the rope coiled tightly around his neck. His eyes wide with fear, he bleated out his terror in cries that sounded eerily