Angel of Okinawa; Chapter 10

 

Angel of Okinawa; Chapter 10

© 2024 by Amber Wright

By April 6^th I knew already that the worse was yet to come.

Already many more soldiers had been brought to our back porch until they even entered our cool house, those of the worst.

I tended to them the best I could but still it ached me to see a soldier die, get buried, and be forgotten by his unmarked grave in the sand.

Live, please! I silently begged as a man drew his raspy breath like a zipper sound. Don’t just let yourself die and be forgotten like the sands by the sea! Live, live!

“Angel, Angel…” a voice was calling me.

I took one final look at the raspy breathing man and hurried over to the other wounded man. I gave him some of Meema’s orange punch and told him to go back to sleep. He needed the rest and so did I.

^{· · ·}

The sweat was dripping down my back as I hurried from one patient to the next on our back porch.

Meema now stayed inside the house tending to the mostly dead men in there while I decided to sweat it out and take the less serious patients.

My back ached me horribly as I bent over to clean the non serious wounds and hand out my homemade chilled rice pudding in small clay cups I had found in the attic this morning.

Milk was fine for some but—for those whose stomachs didn’t react too well with this really hot, humid weather—rice pudding was the next best thing with my “milk fans”. They even loved it, too, so thankful to say. I like people enjoying my food.

True, I may not have reached the history books for fame or even mentioned in there whatsoever, but I was still working there just the same.

To most of the wounded, I may have been only a vision, a glimpse, a dream—as I scurried here and there with my light blond hair and blue eyes in the middle of the native darks.

They may have even thought I was an angel for that’s what they always called me (even though my name is Angel).

But to the few who really knew me there, I was Angel with a capital “A” and had a body of bones, flesh and blood.

I won’t complain of being unnoticed for it was something I didn’t want otherwise. I only knew I was “lending to the Lord” and that was good enough notice.

Bombs whined from the air over naval fleets of both the U. S. and the Japs.

I cringed.

Just how many more deaths would there be to add up today?

Just how many more unmarked graves would there be in the sand or in the sea by nightfall?

Not too many, I hoped.

None, I prayed.

But war was war just the same and it gave no relief until it had ended.

I suddenly heard a woman screaming from the walkway. She was holding something limp in her arms, about 3 feet long, thin and brightly colored.

The woman was running and half stumbling with her wild cries shrilling the air with even more chaos.

Will you please be quiet? I wanted to call out to her. Isn't there already enough noise and chaos here to add to it?

I took a deep breath, but said nothing.

Meema came out of the back door, eyebrows knitted, forehead creased, until she saw the screaming woman who had almost reached the porch door.

What's happened? I froze.

It was Meema’s younger sister, Phan, the one who had married just after Lei’s father had died.

My breath caught in my throat.

Phan stepped onto our porch, hysterically crying. The thing she was carrying was hardly more than recognizable, material soaked in what looked to me like blood, something yellow and gooey underneath it, and—

I saw Meema collapse to her knees in a wail.

Phan collapsed beside her with the bloody bundle still in her arms.

I swallowed.

I tried to think.

I tried to put the facts together…but I just couldn’t. I stood there, frozen.

Little Phanny was playing happily when I saw her last at Meema’s wedding. She was smiling, showing her little white teeth and adorable dark lashed eyes. She wasn’t there, not in Phan’s arms. She couldn’t be!

“What’s that?” I tried to move my icy legs forward and felt my throat closing up on me as if an unseen snake was coiling around my neck.

Where's little Phanny? I sobbed inside.

I pointed to the bundle and my frozen lips croaked out, “What’s that, Phan?”

“It’s your little cousin.” Meema managed to get out, and out of a sudden impulse I wanted to know for sure.

I yanked back the sheet from the top part of the bundle and a couple buzzing flies flew at my face. I shooed them away with one hand and the other hand clutched the sheet that I realized was bloody.

The flies flew away and I blinked my eyes at what I saw…and blinked again.

What was coming over my vision?

Was I really losing my mind after all this war?

Or was I hallucinating after all this horrible heat and strain and tiredness?

But no.

I saw a little face melted gray, and skin and bones torn in large pieces.

Her pretty long lashes were no longer there.

Two blank brown eyeballs stared up at me as if in a daze.

This couldn’t be little Phanny, could it?