From Okinawa to the Americas: Hana Yamagawa and Her Reminiscences of a Century

Growing Up

66 Growing Up Before home distilling of awamori was outlawed, we always had it on hand, but after, it seemed I was always being sent out for it. Even in the scary night, Elder Brother would send me way off to the marketplace in Pama, beyond the cane fields and on the other side of the river, to bring back a jug from the liquor store. “But I don’t want to go. I’m afraid,” I said one night. “What are you afraid of?” “Ghosts.” “Ghosts don’t disturb the righteous.” I had to go, but I said to myself all the way to and from the liquor store, “I am righteous I am righteous I am righteous.” And the crows answered eerily, “Shi-ku-kuuu.” Outside the bamboo enclosure west of the compound was the kitchen garden and a patch for tobacco seedlings. Often, I would be sent to guard the tobacco seedlings from nighttime thieves. Scared stiff, I sat in a shed huddled under a blanket, staring out over the field of sugarcane at the Inapantafwei woods, listening to the night crows there but never moving my eyeballs either left or right, so as to avoid eye contact with the ghosts. growing up 67 Here, too, I would chant all the while, “I am righteous,” until someone, usually Nabe, came to relieve me. Elder Brother would come, too, sometimes , after his drinks. During the daytime one day, Father was entertaining a guest and sent me out for some awamori, and on the way home I ran into one of the male servants of the Yamakashiyas, who greeted me, “Hi, Kana. Let me have a little drink of that stuff.” “All right,” I said and let him have the jar. A little further on the manservant of the Mibutayas asked for a taste, too, and so I let him have a taste. At home, Father found that the awamori I brought home was short. “How much did you buy?” “As much as you told me to—a pint.” “But there’s so little here. Did you give any away?” “Yes, when I was coming home, the Yamakashiyas’ servant and then the Mibutayas’ servant asked for a swallow.” “If it’s those rascals you ran into, they would have spilled plenty down their throats!” he said, laughing. Traditionally, a girl was considered to have reached the age of puberty at the completion of her first zodiacal cycle of twelve years and probably at the last time when her family would have the opportunity to celebrate her birth year. She most likely would have been married off by the end of the next cycle and so was celebrated with a formal religious ceremony and an elaborate feast. Often she was tattooed in the twelfth year. Obasan and I were both born in the year of the horse, and we were honored together in my twelfth year and her eighty-fourth. Our relatives and friends came to congratulate us and take part in the feast. It embarrasses me now to think that I expected to get half the gifts of money because it was my celebration, too, but I didn’t get anything. It is customary to make gifts of money to the family at ceremonial occasions such as weddings, funerals, dedications of a new house, anniversaries, and so on, to help defray the cost of such undertakings. In later years Mama 68 part i would develop a keen sense of her place in her society and know precisely how much she was obliged to give and how much she merited receiving. At twelve years old she was innocent and coveted the monies destined for her family. From that time, when I turned twelve, I was supposed to wear an additional piece of clothing every day called a mecha, a thickly padded cloth that I had no use for because it was meant to take care of menstrual flow, and I didn’t start that for another four years. It was clumsy and binding and I hated it. I took it off and hid it in a barrel intended for storage of raw sugar. Mother found it sometime later. She didn’t scold me. She just sighed and said, “My, my, what a place to put it.” It was about this time that I had to learn to weave. I was supposed to make two full bolts of banana...