Angel of Okinawa; Chapter 22

 

Angel of Okinawa; Chapter 22

© 2024 by Amber Wright

Derek blew a kiss just as the truck was rolling down the road out of sight. I dug my face into the dish towel and cried again.

“Tears on such a sunny day?” Ruri asked me with tight lips as she walked past with a watering can.

I ran up the walkway into the house. I felt my world had fallen. I felt the sky cave in on top of me. Derek was gone!

^{· · ·}

I managed to survive in the following weeks by taking up my old job of milking my trio of milk goats, making my famous chilled rice pudding, and handing out Meema’s famous orange punch.

But the hole was still there.

Derek was gone, either going straight back to Hawaii or on another mission, I didn’t know. To say the least, I was a bag of nerves. Even my cousin buddy Gideon had gone leaving me with American strangers and the Japanese who I had thought I knew so well.

But I was beginning to have my doubts.

Ever since I had showed Derek the shortcut to the airport my neighboring Japs began eyeing me in a way I would call suspicious.

At first I swallowed it down, but now those icy looks were more severe than they had been and it was stinging me pretty bad. I knew they thought I was a spy. And one day while Meema approached me as I was combing my wet hair after a bath, I knew for sure.

“Angel,” Meema spoke to me in a tone both hesitant and to the point, “you know how much I love you. I’ve raised you. I’ve watched you grow up from your gurgling infancy until now.”

I nodded and swallowed, fearing the worst. She wants me to leave because they want me to.

“But recently there’s something I can’t quite understand about you,” Meema put her arm around me and I could almost hear the beating of my heart.

I was for sure she was saying that I would have to leave. That I was being too friendly with our enemies, I was doing the wrong thing, etc. But she spoke again, quieter this time.

“How do you manage to do it?” Meema was asking me while I was trying to pan everything out that I thought would be asked. “You’re just a girl and yet you do things that I can’t do.”

“Like what?” I stared up at Meema blankly, confused. “What do I do?”

“More like,” Meema took a deep breath, “it’s what you don’t do. I know you, Angel. I’ve watched you grow for 15 years now and your face always shows what’s in the inside of you. That’s why I ask you, how?”

“How?” I shook my head, puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“Angel,” Meema's forehead was creased and her lips began to tremble. “You saw your cousin Phanny in pieces. You saw your father near death. You watched your aunt die, shot, and tortured in her mind. How can you really love our enemy? I want to know.”

“Every human has a battle to fight,” I swallowed for the remembrance of those two deaths and one U. S. prisoner still pained me. “And I have mine.”

I lowered my eyes from her pained gaze, and choked out the words. “Those deaths still haunt me, Meema. To see…my brothers die… But then on that day I saw Aunt Phan fall, I saw what hate can do. It can kill a man. It can split a man in two. It can destroy God’s creation. It can murder the innocent. It can take your mind away! I saw this, Meema. And I was determined to never let that thing in my life.”

I paused and cleared my throat for my words ended in a hoarse whisper. “To tell you the truth, Meema, the only enemy I know is hate. That’s what I fight. And some day I’ll win!”

Meema hugged me, and I could tell she was trying to understand me but couldn’t entirely.

I gave up trying to explain. The afterwards would tell. Now was the time to fight. Later, the cure would come to heal all of us inside out. Right now we were all pretty sore.

^{· · ·}

The roads were full of wailing, mourning women as I pedaled my bike towards Meema’s mother’s house.

The air was stale and hot, muggy and miserable. But I was bringing Meema’s mother fresh loaves of bread I had baked myself along with a bowl of my chilled rice pudding. I had packed them nicely in the basket that was strapped to the handlebars of my bike.

I weaved through the women on the road, and my eyes went from one sad face to another. Inside, I was one big raw sore, both healing and yet hurting more. Now, I was being circled out from the people of my island because I had white blood in me. I sighed inside, not letting anyone hear me. I couldn’t dare.

Two days ago on June 21^st the Japs had surrendered near the town of Kiyamu, and just yesterday our General Ushijima committed suicide. Now the streets were full of death wails.