The Tattoo Read online

  My father and uncles brought the boat into shore. It was very late, early morning in fact, when we heard the boat buzzing in from the darkness. A couple of seconds after the engine was killed, the boat’s nose slid up the sand. My father and two uncles jumped out of the craft and pushed the boat further up the beach. I heard the grains of sand rub against the fiberglass hull. I waited farther back on shore than Junior Boy, afraid of the water, especially at night. Gone was the transparency of the ocean surface, it was now black where the lantern light didn’t touch it.

  After the boat was secured, the men began to throw their catch out onto the sand, showing the children their trophies, showing their children what men they were. All sorts of fish were caught in the net. Mullet, weke, awa‘awa, omaka, papio and lai were thrown into a pile. A separate pile was made for the biggest rubbish fish in the ocean — sharks.

  When my father began throwing the baby hammerheads out of the boat, I took a step back. They weren’t big, ranging maybe from one foot to two, but I hated their mutated heads and I associated them with their much larger parents. The last thing my father threw out of the fiberglass boat was a tiger shark, about three feet long and still alive, flapping as soon as it landed on the sand. Though it wasn’t as ugly as the hammerheads, it looked more dangerous, with its large mouth and its hydrodynamic body. There was a lot of kick to it and, with each jump, its entire body cleared the ground. My father stepped out of the boat with a small bat in his hand. I looked back toward the tents and was comforted when I saw my mother walking toward us.

  The next thing I knew, my father scooped me in one of his arms and was walking toward the baby tiger, which, after its first several leaps, had stopped moving. My father put me down a couple of feet away from the shark. “Touch it,” he said.

  I shook my head violently and took a step back.

  “Touch it,” he repeated, beer fumes shooting toward my face.

  Again I looked back for my mother. She was still far away, and I looked up at my father. I felt like one of those sand crabs Junior Boy and I had caught. I felt like I was scurrying in the palm of my father’s hand. “It’s still alive,” I said. “It might bite me.”

  My father shook his head. He took a step toward the shark. He leaned over and hit the shark on the head twice with the bat. It lay still. He stepped toward me. “Now touch it.”

  I refused again and again looked back. Mom was getting really close.

  Then I felt my father’s thick fingers wrap around my forearm. He squeezed hard and it hurt. He stepped me up to the tiger and forced my hand on its back, right above the dorsal. It felt cold. It felt like a flexible layer of rubber, like a slightly flattened basketball. I began to cry. The shark jumped and my father pulled me back. I was hyperventilating. I heard the laughter of my uncles and cousins in the background. Junior Boy’s chubby face was scrunched up in laughter. My father began to howl loudly, too.

  As my mother got close, I lifted both my arms and ran to her. She scooped me up and I felt a little better. She stepped toward my father, who faced her and giggled. She responded with a vicious slap, which landed on my father’s left cheek.

  It was a loud slap, like the sound of the bottom of the bow striking a big wave. He stopped laughing, everybody stopped laughing. He gazed at her, first in shock, then in rage. When my father was mad, nobody I ever met looked meaner. Mom stood her ground. My father slowly worked up a laugh again. The others in the back began to put their best efforts into a phony chuckle. My mother turned around and carried me to the tent. Only the two of us slept in the Hideyoshi tent that night.

  When my father made me touch the shark, it was the first double left hook, overhand right combination he had given me. His syringe arms were working, pumping furiously that night. I’ve had a difficult time not looking over my shoulder ever since. All of this happened before my mother started to get really sick, about two years before she died.

  When your mother dies and you’re six years old, there isn’t much you remember. I don’t care how good your memory is. Like most young memories, scenes flash but dialogue is forgotten. Sometimes when you’re up late at night, out of the blue, you suddenly realize that you’ve forgotten what your mother looked like. You jump out of bed and search frantically for old photo albums. When you find an old picture of her, it’s like, “Oh, yeah.” It’s like when you suddenly forget how to spell a simple word, and you look for it in the dictionary, find it, and tell yourself what an idiot you are for forgetting it. Unlike the spell search, however, when you forget what your mother looked like and you have to rediscover the image with a damn photograph, you take back to bed the guilt of an ungrateful child. I do not need the album now.

  Mom was a tall Japanese woman. A school teacher. She was young when she died, twenty-seven, and as I think back on what she looked like, the image now seems more like that of a long-lost sister. I look like her. She had that long, angular face, thick black hair, unusually dark eyes. She was pretty. She and my father made an interesting-looking couple with their clashing features. My father, with his short but broad body, his Toshiro Mifune-like face. My mother, who was about an inch taller, with her thin features and her thoughtful disposition. She loved to read, books were his kryptonite. He always looked angry, even when he wasn’t, while she looked like she was constantly thinking about something. He was local, born and raised in Hawai‘i, she was a katonk mainlander, sansei, born in internment. He spoke pidgin, her English was impeccable, stone white.

  I hate hospitals. Dignity dies in them. Cold rooms, plastic curtains, ugly gowns, prodding doctors. No comfort, no sympathy. The gowns are the worst. Easy access. Almost naked. I’m surprised there are patients who walk out of a hospital feeling healed and not violated. I’m shocked that families don’t more often spirit their loved ones away from this house of sickness, whose neighbor is the cemetery. As patient and visitor, I have always exited with a fresh wound. Purgatory. A soul waiting. Maybe I was indeed born here.

  I missed school regularly my first-grade year. I spent these absent days in the hospital waiting. Waiting to go home. Waiting to see if Mom was going to live or die. Sometimes friends or relatives waited with us. These were the best times. I played with Junior Boy and the waiting passed more quickly. The friends and relatives were nice. But watching somebody die of cancer is to watch them starve to death. Slowly the flesh peels off the body, the spirit evaporates through the pores. After a couple of months you realize that you’re looking at half of what that person once was. Yellow, skinny, weak. Glassy-eyed.Vacant-eyed. Ugly. Waiting.

  I was six, but I did not cry. Practically everyone else did. I was too young. One of the amazing things about children is that they’re like little beasts. They only howl when they aren’t getting something they want. Adults cry because of anger, guilt, joy, love, and especially sorrow. There is no sorrow for children. For me, the sorrow came later.

  The day before she died, my Aunty Jana had picked me up from school. I was attending school depending on my mother’s condition. If she improved, I went to school, and if she worsened, I was at the hospital. For the last two months of her life, I only saw the worst of her.

  It was still morning, before recess, when Aunty Jana entered the classroom. She whispered in the teacher’s ear and the teacher called me: “Kenji, could you come here?”

  The rest of the class laughed as a couple of my male peers mimicked the teacher with a nasal voice.“Kennjii,” they sneered.

  Humiliated, I stepped toward Aunty Jana and Mrs. Wright. “Kenji,” Mrs. Wright said, “your aunty is here to take you to the hospital. She says your mother is getting worse and that you should be there.”

  Aunty Jana gave my teacher a quick glance. Then she turned her head down to me and said, “Let’s go.”

  As we walked out the open door, I heard Mrs. Wright scold the class. “You kids better learn to be more respectful. His mother is very sick.” Her statement resonated in the hall. As I stepped out to the parking lot, the only thing on my
mind was the hatred I felt for Mom. It was the day before she died.

  I was standing at her bedside in the frigid room which I loathed so much. I didn’t want to look at her, I didn’t want to see that yellow face, to look into those weary dark eyes. Instead of looking at her, I stared at a white vase stationed by her bedside. The vase was vigilant, but lent no comfort. It was a tall and slender vessel, subtly curved outward at the top. I gazed and listened as a weak, rough sound started. As my eyes worked their way up, I saw the vase transformed to thorned stems, leaved here and there. I began counting the leaves. One... Two...Three... Some were caramelizing on their spined edges. More sound. My eyes reached the top of the stems and saw green crowns, the hands of the flowers holding up their bulbs of crimson bloom. The hands looked fuzzy, little hairs responding to the electricity of the room. The sound wouldn’t stop. I counted the bulbs. One... Two... Three... It was hard to see them all because some were hidden behind others. If I were taller I could’ve counted better. I noticed how a rose on the right had petals that spread outward, while others on the left still cocooned their pollen. The sound droned on. I looked at the flowers and thought about how I’d left school that morning. I grew angry, furious. I hated those kids. I hated that sound. Sound and fury not signifying nothing but working together in an orchestra. Woodwinds and reeds. Soft-spoken opera. Tragedy. The sound stopped, but the fury didn’t. I looked up at Mom. She was sleeping. The aria was over.

  The guilt was overwhelming. I knew that sound was her voice, but I didn’t listen. I even knew those were her last words to me, but I just drowned out the sound of her voice with the flowers in the vase.

  She left me little. A face, an asshole father, a shit-load of books. Fucking father went loony after she died. Flashbacks. Of Mom or Nam? The funeral. The lacquered coffin was set high in the front of the mortuary. I gripped the edge, felt the satin on my fingertips, stretched my body as high as it would go, and caught a glimpse. Her face was as white as the language she spoke except for the artificial, rosy cheeks. She wore a frilly white dress. She even had shoes on. She looked like a porcelain doll in her new lacquered doll house. I turned my head back and looked toward the pews. The dozens of faces wore humbled looks. Some I had seen before, some I hadn’t. My grandfather, my father’s father, picked me up and took me outside.

  I think it was a beautiful day. Cool, temperate, no clouds in the Kaneohe sky. Uncharacteristic of the Windward side. Grandpa told me I’d be staying with him for a while because my father needed time alone. I wouldn’t see my father for two months.

  Grandpa lived in Kaneohe. He lived alone since my grandmother had passed away before I was born. As he drove me through the winding roads behind the Kaneohe Police Station, he talked with enthusiasm about the time we would spend together. “We talked to da school, an you can stay out fo’ couple weeks. By den goin’ be summa vacation. We can go fishing. We can go movies. Goin’ be fun.” I wasn’t really listening, just looking out my open window and feeling the sun and wind weather my child face.

  We pulled up Grandpa’s loose gravel driveway and he turned off the engine of his old Toyota Corona. He waited until I got out of the car, then gently put his hands on my shoulders, turned me around and followed me up the three wooden steps that led to his front screen door. As we walked into the living room, I saw the familiar glass case on the other side of the room. “Kenji,” he said,“you can take your fadda’s old room. Arready get some clothes inside. He went drop ‘um off yestaday when he went ask if I can take you for awhile.”

  But I was in a sudden daze. I couldn’t take my eyes off the case, or off the sheathed swords within it. When he tapped the back of my shoulder, I vacantly nodded. Suddenly, his voice rose. “You like see da swords?”

  I nodded vigorously and Grandpa walked me toward the case. After opening the lid, he reached down in the glass box and carefully lifted out the larger sword, the katana. He began speaking again. “My fadda, your great-grand fadda, he brought dis wit him from Japan. Dis sword, he told me, was in our family for yeas. One day I goin’ give ‘um to your fadda, an den he goin’ give ‘um to you. Dese two swords, dey da only tings we get from Japan, da only tings we get from our ancestas. So when you get um, you betta take care.”

  He unsheathed the katana. I could hear the blade sliding out. It was shiny. The setting sun poured rays in through the window, touching the metal. The reflection made my eyes squint. He turned the handle toward me. “Hold ‘um,” he whispered.

  I grabbed the hilt and felt the crimson threading wrapped around it. My palms were sweating. When Grandpa released his grip from the katana, I did not expect the weight. The tip crashed down on the floor, puncturing the carpet. He laughed.“Be careful, da sword heavy.”

  I raised the tip above the ground, looking at the blade, excited by the danger of its sharpness. I turned around and faced the window, lifting the sword up and letting it stand before the bleeding sky. My skinny arms began to shake.

  “Hea,” he said, as he gently took the katana from my hands. He carefully put the decorated sheath back on. “One day dis goin’ be yours,” he repeated as he placed the sword back in its fragile case.

  Sleeping in my father’s old room that night, I had a terrifying dream. I was underwater, naked, armed with my family sword. A big tiger shark was circling me, patiently waiting for me to drop my guard. It kept going around and around as I frantically spun in circles trying to keep the sword between me and it. I was running out of breath, but I refused to rise to the surface. I was getting dizzy. The shark sensed my weakening condition and moved in. It bumped me hard, then quickly retreated and began circling again. Every time I would begin losing consciousness, the shark would bump me and wake me up. This seemed to go on for hours, and in frustration I yelled for my mother. My own cowardly chill woke me.

  The Tripmaster Monkey said of the first Japanese immigrants: “They didn’t come wretched to this country looking for something to eat. They’d been banished by the emperor or Amaterasu herself after taking the losing but honorable side in a lordly duel.”

  That was when my great-grandfather came to Hawai‘i. Meiji Restoration. After over two-and-a-half centuries of Tokugawa rule, the emperor got his Japan back. Too bad. The Tokugawas had the right idea. Keep the West out. Keep the white man’s god out.

  My great history lesson began the day after my mother’s funeral. After my grandfather cooked us up some apple and cinnamon oatmeal, he said, “You know, it’s time I told you about your history, not da kine haole history you goin’ learn in school, but our history. Japanese history.”

  We sat there and he told me about the Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu’s son. “You know why Japan da best? Cause afta Ieyasu’s son became Shogun, he told all da haoles to leave. When dey went try come back da son told his samurai to chop off da heads of half da crew, put da heads on sticks on da beach, and he told da res’ of da haoles, ‘Dis what goin’ happen if you try come back.’ Shit, if da Filipinos and Hawaiians did da same, who knows?”

  Grandpa, the World War II veteran, the member of the Go for Broke 442nd, paused. I looked into his wrinkled face, into his old eyes that always looked watery. When men get old, it seems life is such a strain for them that the tears involuntarily flow. He continued. “You look at da Japanese. Was like da Middle Ages when da Tokugawas ruled. Da emperor take ova, fifty yeas lata, da Japanese one major world force. Fifty yeas, Japan not only catch up to everybody, but in da top four.”

  He paused again. You had to be patient when you listened to Grandpa. His mind was still sharp, but it was like his mouth couldn’t work in sync with it.“You heard of da Kamikazes, yeah?”

  I took in a spoonful of oatmeal and nodded.

  “You see, Japanese, dey die befo’ dey accept defeat. Took one atomic bomb to beat da Japanese.”

  I scraped the last spoonful of oatmeal from my bowl. It tasted sweet. My grandfather took the empty bowls to the sink and brought back two glasses of milk. “You know,” he said, “da Chinese could nev
a beat Japan. Dey went try. Kublai Khan went try. But da wind, da Kamikaze, sent ‘um back. Das da closest dey got. But Japan went beat China. You can imagine, one small island went beat up one big country? But was no fair. Da haoles went arready suck da spirit out of China.” Again, there was a pause. “You know, da opium.” He stopped to gaze at me. “You betta neva do drugs, boy. Goin’ kill da samurai spirit.”

  Late that night, we started a tradition which lasted throughout my stay. We stayed up till ten o’clock and watched his favorite show, Abarenbo Shogun. I watched the subtitles flash on the bottom of the screen. It was toward the end when the Shogun, Yoshitsune, starts beating the hell out of an army of traitor samurai. It always ended the same. The treacherous daimyo of the week, recognizing the Shogun by the now visible Chrysanthemum crest on his kimono, bowed down to Yoshitsune. Yoshitsune, the ruler of the whole country, throughout the show had been assuming another identity to personally infiltrate the shady dealings going on in his kingdom. The daimyo never recognized him until the end, though. The subtitles read something like, “You have betrayed me. I order you to commit suicide right now.”The daimyo responded with,“He’s an imposter, kill him!” They never even came close. Before the treasonous attack ensued, the Shogun flicked his wrist and prepared to fight with the blunt, unbladed side of his katana. He mowed them down, knocking them unconscious with the power of his blows, without even sustaining a scratch. His blade remained unsoiled. His two assassins finished the job, killing the traitor daimyo.

  After the show was over, I went to bed. I spent the night dreaming I was Yoshitsune, except I saw myself using the sharp side of the katana blade. I killed hundreds of samurai that night.