Shimura Trouble

7

I MADE IT back across the Pierce fields unmolested except for by a few knobby passion fruits, which dropped from an old, twisted tree on my head and on the path in front of me. When I entered the townhouse, however, carrying two handfuls of tiny fruit, trouble was waiting.

My father, Tom and Uncle Hiroshi were all seated at the dining table, with full glasses of water. There were empty plates, and knives and forks and spoons all laid in the proper places. They looked as if they were waiting for someone to serve them. But what? I knew there was nothing in the fridge except for ketchup and sugar left by the previous renters.

Trying to ignore the accusatory expressions, I put the fruit on the table, and then stooped to unlace my shoes. “Good morning, everyone, I’ve brought you some passion fruits-which I believe are called lilikoi here.”

“Where were you, Rei?” my father asked sternly.

“I went for a run, got a coffee, and came back.”

“You went to drink coffee by yourself? I’d been hoping you’d gone to shop for food for our breakfast,” my father said.

I glanced at my watch; it was eight o’clock. “I imagine the stores are opening right now. Dad, did you take your pills? There’s that one you need to take on an empty stomach, remember?”

“Safeway in Kapolei opened at seven,” Tom said. “We wanted to go, but we didn’t want to leave without you, because of course you’d want to choose what you need for cooking.”

I felt that sinking feeling again, now certain that I was expected to cook and clean for them. If I didn’t want to wind up like an overworked picture bride, I would have to subtly resist. I smiled and said, “Yes, I’d like to help you go shopping,” before disappearing into my bathroom to shower off all the red field dust. After that, I hustled past them with the towel wrapped around me, into my room, where I unpacked khaki shorts, a black tank top, and sandals. I went out with wet hair, because the warm Hawaiian air would probably give me a natural blow-dry within a half-hour.

Tom took the wheel, in order to practice driving on the right side of the road, and I navigated. Safeway was easy to find, smack in the middle of a strip mall anchored by two mainland chains: Blockbuster Video and RadioShack. Inside Safeway, however, I was pleased to find two long aisles devoted exclusively to Asian foods, ranging from umpteen kinds of sweet bean cakes to sembei crackers and dozens of different instant noodle brands with instructions only in Japanese, Chinese and Tagalog.

Local pineapple and papaya was plentiful, but it was harder to find locally grown vegetables. I did the best I could, searching out island-hatched eggs and local lettuce and tomatoes, and then dealing with my father’s shock at the prices when it was time to pay.

Even with the added weight of a dozen grocery bags, the minivan made it back to Kainani, where I prepared a large breakfast of scallion-and-tomato omelettes for everyone-two whites and no yolk for my father-plus toasted slices of a sweetish white bread. Tom performed surgery on a Maui pineapple, cutting its flesh into perfect triangles. I cut into the passion fruit I’d picked up on my run, and scooped its runny yellowish interior into a small bowl.

When I tasted the passion fruit, I almost swooned. It was sweet-sour, fragrant, and the perfect complement to the excellent pineapple, which was not just sweet but complex, with almost a hint of coconut flavor.

Once we all had food in our stomachs, the mood around the table improved. I found myself enjoying a conversation with my uncle and Tom about what was happening in Japan.

“Rei-chan, I think you’re ready to become a wife,” Uncle Hiroshi said, wiping his mouth with satisfaction on one of the decorative paper napkins I’d bought. “I wonder what kind of dinner Edwin’s wife will make for us?”

“Margaret?” I asked, resenting the easy sexism my uncle displayed. “Who knows if she’s the family cook? It could be Edwin, or maybe the children, Courtney and Braden, if they’re old enough.”

“They all have Western names,” Tom mused.

“That seems to be the pattern of most Japanese-Americans,” my father said. “It probably has something to do with not wanting to be noticeably foreign, after what happened during the Second World War.”

“Yes, we cannot expect them to be Japanese at all,” Uncle Hiroshi said. “It’s been a century, almost, since our great-great-aunt arrived. It’s only natural they are more American than Japanese.”

I THOUGHT ABOUT my uncle’s words that night as we drove the minivan into the neighborhood where Edwin and his family lived. I’d expected it to be a flashy neighborhood, but Honokai Hale turned out to be an older community, a hodge-podge of modest homes that seemed to have followed no architectural master plan such as I’d seen in the town of Kapolei. Chain link fences, monster trucks, and barking dogs greeted us as we parked on Laaloa Street in front of an asphalt-shingled two-story house with rusted air-conditioners fixed in the windows. But because of the height of the neighborhood, it offered a magnificent view of the Pacific Ocean in all its glory, punctuated only by the containers and buildings of the shipyard I’d noticed earlier.

“My goodness,” my father said, interrupting my contemplation. “Could that be Edwin’s father-our ojiisan Yoshitsune?”

Startled, I looked at an elderly man coming around the side of the house, dragging a hose. He wore knee-length rubber boots, dirty khaki pants and a white undershirt. With a complexion like keyaki wood, squint lines around the eyes, and a shock of white hair, he looked like an aged Japanese peasant.

My father bowed deeply and murmured a traditional Japanese greeting, but the man frowned as if puzzled, and asked in a heavy pidgin accent, “You the one from Yokohama?”

“No, I am he.” Uncle Hiroshi came forward, bowing, and introduced himself in very formal Japanese, not the usual way a banker would speak to an old man in a dirty undershirt and fisherman’s boots. Tom joined him, bowing and introducing himself.

Still the man wouldn’t give his name, so I decided to speak to him in English. “My name is Rei Shimura. May I ask if you are Mr. Yoshitsune Shimura?”

“Nobody talk that formal out here. You can call me Uncle Yosh,” the man said, looking me over rather critically. “You came for my birthday, yah?”

“Yes, we did,” Tom answered in English, as if he’d finally realized that was our great-uncle’s preferred language. “I’m Tsutomu, but please call me Tom. Like you, I prefer a nickname!”

“You all a little late.”

“Uncle Yosh, I’m sorry. I must not have driven quickly enough.” I glanced at my watch, which read five to six.

“I mean that I made eighty-eight last year! Why you not come then?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, shooting a significant look at my father. “I believe our families found each other a month ago.”

“Yes, Oji-sama, I regret we have come a year late to supper!” my father valiantly chimed in. “We feel so lucky to finally meet you and to learn about the life of your mother, who must have been a very brave, strong, character.”

“My kaa-san?” Yoshitsune asked. I almost didn’t understand him, because he was using the word for mother without the honorific ‘o’ in front that was customary in Japan.

“Your okaasan, Shimura Harue-sama,” my father answered politely, still in Japanese. “She apparently left our family when she was quite young. We are eager to learn about her.”

“Surprise to hear that. She didn’t choose to leave Japan.” Yoshitsune’s voice was cool, and as he evaluated us, I felt a rush of shame, followed by curiosity that got the better of me.

“We want to know why,” I said. “My father said he heard whisperings there had been a sister to his grandfather, but nothing more than that.”

“She didn’t want to get married to some old fool they picked for her husband,” Yosh said, grinning slightly. “So they said you don’t want to marry, you gotta leave the house. She was thinking that meant she’d find a job somewhere in Tokyo, but she had no clue about the real, hard world!”

“This is fascinating,” my father said. “What happened next?”

“Your great-grandpa bought her a one-way ticket to Honolulu and also some false papers saying that she had relatives sponsoring her. She told me she thought it was going to be a great adventure. She only got scared once she was on the boat, when the other passengers, all of them rough, poor people from the countryside, insisted she would have to be married for anyone to hire her or give her housing. And that’s how she came to meet and marry my fadduh, a few days after she arrived…”

“Good, you found us!” Edwin said as he opened the front door and broke into the story. “But, Dad, look at yourself! I told you to get dressed hours ago; this is your birthday party!”

Yoshitsune waggled the hose at him. “The koi need something to swim in. I gotta fill the pool again, there must be a leak.”

“Do you keep koi?” I asked, looking around the garden. Then I saw it, a small ornamental fishpond occupying pride of place in the center of a dry-grass yard. I followed Yoshitsune over to the pond and stayed, looking at the fish, as he stuck the hose in the pool, then ambled back over to the side of the house to turn on the water. I’d assumed only specially treated water went into these ponds, but the half-dozen long gold, orange and cream fish looked healthy. Whatever Uncle Yosh was doing, it worked.

“Come in, come in,” Edwin urged, and obediently, I followed everyone up a cracked cement path and left my sandals at the doorway. The shoes-off tradition was part of Japanese culture that had endured.

Inside, I was zealously hugged by Edwin, and then by a small, sun-browned woman with short black hair attractively streaked with silver.

“When we learned about you and your family, we were so excited.” Auntie Margaret spoke with a melodious lilt that so many people in Hawaii had, to some degree-perhaps vestiges of their grandparents’ home languages. “But you came by yourself! Where’s your husband?”

“I don’t know. I’m not married yet.” I smiled at her, thinking again that Hawaii wasn’t so different from Japan, if a thirty-year-old was automatically expected to be married.

“Oh, still not yet!” Margaret laughed. “We heard about your big-shot lawyer fiancé. He won a class action suit, yah?”

Now I flushed red and understand who the ‘son’ was that Edwin had referred to in his letter to my father. “It’s true that Hugh Glendenning did work with many other lawyers on a class action suit representing comfort women and forced laborers who suffered during World War Two. We’re really not in contact with each other anymore, though.”

“What do you mean?” Edwin asked. “I can help you find him; I’m good at tracking people down…”

“No. I mean, I don’t want to find him. We’re not engaged anymore.”

“Oh, sorry to hear that!” Edwin said, and Margaret looked at me with sympathy.

“Please take this small, unworthy token. It’s not very good, but all we could find.” Tom blessedly interrupted the situation by offering Edwin a gift bag containing a bottle of California chardonnay we’d chosen at the Safeway.

“Very kind. Thank you!” Edwin waved us all to follow him into the tidy living room, which looked as if it had been decorated in the early eighties, with floral-chintz sofas, and lots of rattan. A young girl, her face hidden in a thick copy of Modern Bride, was lying on the carpet close to the air-conditioner. I sat down on a floral-patterned sofa with my father. Edwin put the bottle of wine into a cabinet which I saw already held many bottles of wine and hard liquor, some still in the boxes. So it seemed he rarely drank.

“Courtney!” Edwin called to the girl on the floor. “I told you before, when the guests come in, serve the pupus.”

Before I could greet her, Courtney had shot up and gone through the kitchen door. Moments later, she returned precariously carrying a tray of deep-fried hors d’oeuvres. While everyone oohed and ahhed over the golden brown minced shrimp balls and oversized potato and eggplant tempura, I looked anxiously at my father. Fried foods were highest on his list of banned foods. Now temptation was staring at him from a blue and white platter, and he was stretching out a hand.

“Otoosan!” I whispered loudly.

“I cannot refuse. That would be rude,” my father said in a low voice before popping a shrimp ball in his mouth.

Tentatively I took a shrimp ball, biting through the crisp, golden brown crust to taste the freshest, sweetest shrimp I’d ever eaten, finely minced and exuberantly seasoned with biting, fresh scallions and cilantro leaves.

“This is delicious!” I said after I’d swallowed it. “Who made them?”

“It’s from a little okazu-ya in Waipahu. If you like okazu snack foods, I can tell you all the best places,” Margaret said.

“Please do,” I said, wondering how, if the food was take-out, it was so very hot and crisp. The answer came when I glanced at the stove and saw a deep pan of oil. The snacks had been refried at home, making them even unhealthier.

“Eat more!” Margaret urged. “I’m sorry to say that I don’t do much around the house, ever since the kids got big and I started working.”

“Ah! Do you work nearby?” Uncle Hiroshi asked, smiling.

“Quite near. I’m director of housekeeping at the hotel.”

The smile on Uncle Hiroshi’s face froze, and I imagined the calculator in his banker’s brain had made a judgment on the family. And I too was recalling all the Japanese maids in the old novels I was reading about Hawaii, and how in the newspaper article I’d read, activists had rued that the proposed new jobs in the area would be mostly in the service industry.

“I’m too tired after work to do much cleaning around here-and I have to admit that I’m not much of a cook, especially of complicated Japanese dishes. I’m not full Japanese like you; I’m hapa, mixed with Hawaiian. Edwin calls me mixed plate.”

“I guess Rei is mixed plate, too. Her mother is American,” Tom volunteered.

“Never would have guessed it! Toshiro, did you marry a haole girl?” Uncle Edwin asked in a tone that I wasn’t entirely sure was friendly teasing.

My father looked blank, and I quietly said that yes, my mother was Caucasian. Haole was a Hawaiian term that originally referred to anything foreign, one example being a tree, the koa haole, which resembled a native koa, but was widely regarded as an invasive pest.

Great-Uncle Yoshitsune joined us wearing a short-sleeved blue aloha shirt, his face and hands freshly scrubbed. Even in proper dress, he still resembled a garden gnome.

“Oto-chan used to do a lot of cooking when he was a young man,” Margaret said, nodding her head at Uncle Yosh. “For a while he lived in Honolulu, so he knew the best butchers and fishmongers. He used to take my mother-in-law until she passed away ten years ago, may she rest in peace. Now the only one likely to do any cooking is Courtney, and that’s just because she so obsessed with planning her own bridal reception.”

“Are you?” I asked, smiling at her with curiosity.

“Am not! I just like the pictures, the clothes, the…stuff,” Courtney said with a sigh.

“Between Harry Potter and those bridal magazines, my kid lives in a fantasy world,” Edwin said. “Thank goodness you gotta be twenty-one to get married here-otherwise, she’d be picking out a husband when she start her senior year!”

“Daddy, please!” Courtney was bright red by now, tears starting in her eyes.

“Tell me about where to shop for fish, Uncle Yosh,” I said quickly, to change the subject.

“Tamashiro’s on North King Street, in Palama. I don’t drive no more so Margaret, you should go there,” Uncle Yoshitsune chided. “I hear they sometimes still get opihi.”

“Too far, too much trouble,” Margaret said, smiling easily.

“What are opihi?” I asked.

“A small type of shellfish that clings to rocks. Harvesting it is quite dangerous,” Margaret said. “What they call it in English, Edwin?”

“Limpet,” Edwin said. “It’s scarce, but it sure makes tasty poke.”

Poke, pronounced po-kay, was Hawaii’s version of ceviche; I’d had it with tuna or octopus many times. Suddenly I had a yearning for it. This trip still had potential, at least from a gastronomic perspective.

“We have some things for you.” My father gestured toward the dozen or so gift bags we had brought with us. According to Japanese tradition, I had carefully wrapped each gift, and then put each box in an individual shopping bag.

“Oh, I don’t need nothing,” Uncle Yosh said.

“Presents? Thanks!” Courtney seemed to waken up as she reached for a bag containing her gift certificate to Delia’s, and her parents eagerly leafed through the bags, looking for the ones labeled with their names. Aunt Norie had bought Margaret a beautiful silk scarf, and I’d found a book on new uses for green tea for Edwin.

“Where’s Braden? We have something for him,” I said. Tom had chosen the gift, the very latest Nintendo game from Tokyo’s Akihabara electronics district.

“The boy suppose to be here, but running late. We should go ahead,” Edwin said.

Everyone seemed pleased with the gifts my father and I had chosen, and Norie had sent over with Tom and Uncle Hiroshi. The reaction I cared about was Uncle Yosh’s to the album I’d made. He himself on the sofa, turning pages slowly as I stayed nearby, ready to answer questions. A strange expression came over his face after a few minutes of studying the album.

At last he spoke. “I heard a lot about these people. But why don’t you have any pictures of Kaa-chan?”

I felt bad about Harue having been disowned. “It was the turn of the century, and perhaps any family pictures of her didn’t survive, or if they did, weren’t recognized as such by us. I’m so sorry; I want to go back and look again…”

“I have an idea,” Tom said brightly. “Perhaps we shall learn the name of her old schools in Japan, and get childhood photographs that way. We were able to find such photographs for the males in the family.”

“She didn’t go to school.”

“What?” I exclaimed, shocked. The Shimuras were an intellectual family.

“She had a governess, she told me. Learned all these fancy ways of talking-guess it was good over there, but hard here. People laughed at her Japanese,” Uncle Yosh said, shaking his head. “Sorry to say, I was embarrassed many times.”

“Really,” I said. This corroborated everything I knew about the folkways of the Shimura family. I wanted to continue, but Edwin cut in.

“It’s time for eat. Our dining table isn’t so big, so we serving food in the kitchen, and you can bring it out here. Please, come try.”

My father had been ushered to the front of the buffet line, so he was well away from my gaze. I couldn’t possibly cut in front of everyone to supervise his food choices. I could only worry.

An hour later, I realized that my father’s decision to eat barbecued pork, sticky rice and deep-fried vegetable tempura was the least of my problems. As Margaret sliced a coconut cake, Edwin opened his agenda, and pretty much everything I had feared about this trip came to pass.