Above the East China Sea: A Novel (35 page)

As I ran back toward my cave, I passed another group of soldiers carrying rifles. They took positions behind a windbreak, ready to fire at any enemy who should appear. Just as I reached the cave entrance, several cracking shots splattered the mud where my feet had landed only an instant before. The soldiers at the windbreak fired back and no more shots were aimed my way.

In the cave, Hatsuko, Miyoko, and Sachiko were stuffing what few things they had left into bundles. The moment she saw me, my sister
rushed up and enfolded me in a hug. My heart soared with happiness that she had forgiven me. “Where have you been?” she demanded. “I couldn’t find you. I was so worried. They’re here! The order has already been given for us to evacuate for Makabe immediately. We’re all ready to leave, but we can’t find our cousin Mitsue.”

“She must have left with another group,” Sachiko said.

In the corridor orders were yelled for the evacuation to begin at once.

Hatsuko nudged me toward Miyoko and Sachiko, who were rushing to join the group assembling.

“Go with them,” she ordered. “I have to do one last thing before I leave. I’ll find you when we reach Makabe.” I knew immediately what that last thing was. “No, we have to go now. Lieutenant Nakamura is probably already on the road ahead of us.”

“He’s not. His unit was ordered to stay behind,” she answered, setting off without another word.

“I’m going with you,” I insisted.

We shouldered our packs and rushed toward the officers’ quarters.

“He must have just left,” Hatsuko said, stricken, as we stared into the cave, empty save for a few playing cards and a can holding the butts of their pine-needle cigarettes. Some of them were still smoldering.

“Wait,” I whispered. “Do you hear that?”

From around a corner, down the dark corridor came the sound of whimpering, as though someone might be trapped. Certain that someone was in terrible danger, I hurried off toward the distressing sound. I turned a corner and saw Nakamura far down the corridor. His back was to me. His pants were down and his slender buttocks shone in the guttering yellow light of the kerosene lantern at his feet. They clenched rhythmically as he thrust into a woman pressed between himself and the cave wall. Her legs were wrapped around Nakamura’s waist. I tried to stop Hatsuko from seeing who he was with, but failed. The woman saw Hatsuko as clearly as Hatsuko saw her. The luminous whiteness of her arching neck. The profile perfect enough to be carved onto a cameo brooch. The unmistakable outline of her lips, as full as a cartoon goldfish’s.

THIRTY-FIVE

I lead Jake back through the Heiwa-dōri’s maze of shops. Outside, beyond the high, arched roof of glass, the light drizzle has turned to a hard rain, and a field of colored umbrellas bright as Easter eggs has burst into bloom. Jake and I are both soaked by the time we jump back into his car, and the spot on the shoulder of his shirt where I wept has been washed away. The rain slithering down the windows makes it feel cozy inside the car, turning everything outside into a wobbly, Impressionistic painting. I dig through my bag, grab the photo, hand it to Jake, and point to the gray-and-red car that I had thought was part of Chicago’s elevated train.

“Isn’t that the monorail?”

Jake nods.

“And those blossoms at his feet?”

Jake studies the date. “This was taken when the
deigo
trees were in bloom.”

“There must be one nearby, outside of the frame.”

“And this guy? You think he’s your …?”

Jake waits for me to fill in “grandfather,” but the certainty I had standing in the
yuta
’s courtyard dissolves beneath his hard-eyed scrutiny. I can’t tell Jake about Codie’s hair. How the silent, aggrieved man with his pale, patchy skin who was our grandmother’s husband could not have been our mother’s father. All I can say with even the smallest sliver of confidence is, “I’m pretty sure he knows something about my family history.” I change the subject. “The photo had to have been taken here, though, didn’t it? A
deigo
tree
and
a two-car monorail? How many other cities could possibly have that combination?”

“It has to be Naha.”

“Of course, now the problem is to figure out where this was taken. Naha has, like, what? Half a million people?”

“Close to that.”

I touch the corner of the sign above the guy’s head. “ ‘apLand.’ My best guess is that it’s a misspelling of App Land. Some tech store.” I
grab Jake’s phone, regretting that I haven’t brought mine along, even if it would have meant being subjected to Mom’s texts. “I’ll Google it.”

“Don’t bother.” Jake’s tone is weird. He flips the photo back onto my lap and pulls into traffic. “I know exactly where and what that is. It’s pretty much the first place a certain kind of guy wants to see.” Jake doesn’t give any more explanation as we drive in silence, but his reaction, verging on disgust, reminds me of the
yuta
’s.

The rain has stopped by the time we leave the broad boulevards lined with royal palms and shops spilling out their glittering merchandise and turn onto narrower and narrower streets until we’re creeping along a nearly deserted back road lined with dingy two- and three-story concrete buildings. We pass through a few blocks that look like a ghost town. Abandoned businesses with boarded-up windows and weeds growing through the concrete steps in front sport signs with letters so faded by the sun that I can barely make out the names: Club Kentucky. High Time Bar. The Manhattan. Girls Girls Girls. Beneath several of the names is the invitation “GI Welcome.” High overhead, the gleaming silver track of the monorail skims above the rooftops.

Suddenly, amid all the gray buildings, we encounter one painted a vivid crimson. The shocking color frames a painting two stories high that depicts a beautiful woman in a red-and-lilac kimono sniffing a flower. A few blocks later there is another clump of equally gaudy bright buildings. The first is painted a shocking pink. On its far end, a two-story poster depicts a pair of anime girls in French-maid costumes, breasts overflowing laced bodices, while some invisible fishing line hoists up the backs of ruffled skirts to reveal the clefts of their butts. With a sarcastic tone, Jake translates the caption beneath the girls: “ ‘Welcome home, Mr. Married Man. Your wife is out shopping for the day. Is there anything we can do for you before she gets back?’

“Check that one out.” He points to a place with a sign that translates as “The Girls’ Nursing Academy.” The two-story building is covered in bathroom tile and features giant posters of young Japanese girls in sexy nurse uniforms and pink scrubs. There is another caption, and though Jake does this translation in a high, girly voice, it’s obvious that he doesn’t think any of this is funny. “ ‘Please come in! We need to check your pulse. Now please remove all of your clothes. We’d like to check your blood pressure, too.’ ”

On the street, a couple of businessmen in black suits crane their necks to study the photos of the nurse girls. A thuggy-looking guy with slicked-back hair steps out and beckons the men to enter, holding the door open, and pointing to other photos posted on the signboard next to him.

“What are these, strip clubs? Whorehouses?”

Jakes gives a dry imitation of a laugh. “Whorehouses? Technically, no, since prostitution has been illegal in Japan since the midfifties. No, these are ‘bathhouses,’
sōpu
s. Which is why what you pay for in a
sōpu
is just a bath. A very, very expensive bath where the girl washes you with her naked, soapy body. But if, during all the rub-a-dub-dub, the couple should just happen to realize that they are soul mates and fall deeply in love and can’t keep themselves from having mad, passionate sex … well, it happens. That’s just two strangers who’ve fallen in love. The money is for the bath. Period. That’s the Japanese way.”

“You sure know a lot about all this,” I say.

Jake shakes his head. “No one who grows up here doesn’t know about Soaplands. In a lot of ways, they’re an essential part of Oki history. This, the
Tsuji
pleasure quarter, is the point where Japan, Okinawa, and, now that the dollar is so weak, to a much lesser degree America all literally rub up against one another.”

I’m relieved that Jake’s judgment and disgust are for murky political relationships. He drives on, pointing out the tiled, painted businesses as we pass them. “Okay, there you’ve got the Princess Heart, the Emerald, and Wave. And look.” Jake tilts his head toward a couple of soldiers. “The first customers of the day.”

Though they’re in civvies, I figure them to be marines, since everything about them—from their bald-on-the-sides, high-and-tight haircuts, to their weight-lifter muscles, to their rolling gaits, like their balls are so enormous they have to straddle them with each step—is military on steroids. They’re too big for the narrow street, too red-faced for the glaring sun. The marines pause in front of the Princess Heart and stare at the poster of a girl with a face like Betty Boop and breasts like a Jersey cow.

The soldiers shove each other as they study a price list that starts at twenty-four thousand yen for an hour, more than they make in a week. A tough-looking Okinawan bouncer wearing sunglasses, his hair
gelled into a spiky ’do, slouching against a wall, straightens up, flicks his cigarette into the street, and closes in on the marines. He waves the soldiers away with broad gestures. The marines fail to take the hint and start to go in anyway. The bouncer, arms folded in front of his chest, blocks their entrance, and, with one nod of his head, two guys appear to flank him. The marines start to force their way past, and the three men drop down into the Stance. The marines recognize the serious ass-kicking potential on display, flip the guys off, and leave.

Jake takes a left, turns down a street drabber and drearier than the others, and stops in front of the drabbest and dreariest building in the neighborhood. It is, however, distinguished by three features: 1. down the alley that runs along the side of the building is a clear view of the monorail; 2. shooting straight up from a massive planter embedded in the sidewalk a
deigo
tree reaches for the sunlight above the roofline; and 3. the sign above the door is spelled out, not in Japanese characters but in straightforward English: SoapLand. “This the place you were looking for?”

“I didn’t think it would be … You know.” I’m embarrassed. Just as I feared, the instant I let anything about my family out, humiliation follows.

“SoapLand, that’s the name of this establishment and the translation of
sopū,
” Jake explains, as he backs the car into a side street and parks in a spot that allows us to see without being seen. “SoapLand is the only place around here that’s so low-class they take foreigners, even the most despised of the
gaijin,
soldiers. U.S. GIs were what originally built the businesses, but all that’s changed. Most
sōpu
s now won’t even let a GI stand outside and ogle the photos of the girls, because they’ll scare away the customers with real money, Japanese businessmen.”

The rain has stopped, and in the bright sunlight SoapLand looks even dingier. The aqua tile framing the frosted glass next to the front door has a filigree of mildew along the grout lines. The large photos of girls sporting ratted-up hairstyles, pale lipstick, and heavy eyeliner from the sixties and seventies, posted in glass cases outside, are so old they have faded to a lifeless blue. They remind me of the photo of my grandmother. Too much.

“Actually,” I say, “I’ve changed my mind. I don’t even know why I thought that I’m related to”—I wave at the scene on the other side of
the windshield—“any of this. My grandfather was a farmboy from Missouri. My grandmother met him when he was stationed at Kadena.”

As I speak, the marines rejected from the higher-class
sōpu
down the street appear. As soon as they move into view, there is motion on the other side of the frosted glass of SoapLand. The shadow of a man wobbles across the glass as he nears the open door. My heart gives a violent stroke.

“So, you want to leave?” Jake asks.

The shadow is inches away from being exposed at the open door. “Yes, we should leave. Now.”