CHAPTER 39

HANA

A toy Japanese Mitsubishi A6M Zero Fighter Plane

I wake to a joyfully thunderous sky. Taro is coming today. I rise early, heat the water for our washing bowls, and dress quickly so I may get to work. Sunday is our day at home. We are schoolgirls, after all. If there had been a flight today, Tomihara-san would be the one to wave goodbye in our stead. But the downpour outside means no one will fly.

After a quick breakfast, Okā-san sets the red beans to simmer on our old stove while I grind the soybeans to make tofu. The suribachi mortar sits on the table, a heavy ceramic bowl with a rough pattern like swirling grass on the inside. I scoop a cupful of soybeans and soaking water into the suribachi and pound them with the wooden surikogi, using the pestle to smooth the beans into a thick, foaming paste. Each bowlful of paste is poured into a large pot, until all of it is ready to cook.

Okā-san helps me put the pot on the fire. We take turns stirring the bean paste and adding cups of water to keep it from foaming over. After half an hour, the mixture has turned grainy, like lumps of meal in soy milk. This is okara, the pulp of the cooked beans.

I ladle the milk onto a fine muslin cloth tied across the top of a large bowl. Pressing the ladle down, I squeeze the freshly made soy milk through the cloth.

We take a break from our labors while the milk continues to drain, sharing a cup of the first batch in the doorway. It tastes of summer grass.

Outside, the rain splashes down in large fat drops, loud enough to blur the sounds of people inside the restaurant next door. It’s almost as if the war has gone silent. A cricket chirrups in the garden. A cat rushes past on some fur-soaked errand. Okā-san claps her hands on her thighs, and we rise to finish our tasks.

Okā-san takes the cloth, now full of soybean pulp, and scrapes it into the suribachi. She will fry some of the okara with diced vegetables and a bit of soy sauce, doing what she can to make it savory. Okara is high in protein, but low in flavor otherwise. The rest will go to thicken the soup.

I find I am humming as we work. Okā-san glances at me, and I fall silent, embarrassed by this bubbling inside me. But then she begins humming, too.

I remember this, from when I was young. Before America entered the war. Otō-san would play the koto, or he would sing as he worked, cutting kimono and Western suits from fine cloth. And Okā-san would cook wonder after wonder, and we were always full and never went to bed hungry.

We are luckier than most. In the cities, they have no river of fish, no fields of their own to grow tea and sweet potatoes. And yet I had forgotten what it is like to have so much food in one place at one time.

Perhaps I am being greedy. Okā-san and I could live off these rations for a week.

But not everyone has a week to live, I remind myself, and return to my task.

I carefully measure a few grains of calcium salts into the milk to curdle it into tofu. Before this new war, we made tofu with nigari, and it was rich and grassy and sweet. Okā-san doesn’t care for the new way of making it, but nigari is high in magnesium—a vital component for the aeroplanes Taro and his friends fly. I wonder if he knows this. Perhaps I will tell him at lunch today. Our worlds are more entwined than I would have guessed.

The soy milk clumps and foams. Once it’s curdled, I scoop the curds into our tofu press—a simple box of blond wood, now stained with use and age, with a lining of fine cloth and holes along the sides for drainage. I weight the lid down with a brick. White milk squeezes out onto the plate below. While the tofu drains, Okā-san combs the cabinets for seasonings for the okara.

On the back of the stove, the millet has simmered long enough. The grain is soft and ready to mash. I wash out the suribachi and bend my arms to the task. Once upon a time, this would have been tiresome. But laundry duty has changed me. My arms are wiry, the flesh hardened and thinned by work and hunger. And yet, today I feel soft and light.

Once the millet cools enough, I pinch off bite-size pieces and roll them between my palms into balls. Okā-san has borrowed sugar from Tomihara-san. She will cook the red beans into a sweet anko paste to mix into a broth for the millet. I imagine Taro taking his first bite and picture a smile on his face. Will he feel my fingerprints on his lips? I blush.

“Get dressed, Hana; stop daydreaming,” my mother says. “Go and fetch our guests!” She startles me out of my reverie.

My hair is damp with steam and hanging in my face, my fingers red with work, my cheeks flushed. Where is the delicate flower I imagined, gracefully inviting Taro to dine? Hopefully hiding beneath the mess of rumpled clothes and sleep deprivation I see in the mirror. I brush my hair brutally, splash cool water on my face, and pull on a clean school uniform. It hangs off of me, no longer the daily wear of a plump child.

“No,” Okā-san says to me, wagging a finger when she sees how I look. “The chest by the window. Take my lilac kimono. This is a special affair.”

A kimono. How long since I’ve worn one that was not a simple cotton yukata, something for the home? My mother helps me don the nagajuban underrobe with its long collar and sleeves, the soft sash that ties it at my waist. I fold the kimono collar in half, and she helps me slip it on. It’s a luxury to pull the textured silk over my arms. She returns to cooking as I straighten my sleeves and tie the second sash after wrapping the kimono left over right and behind. My fingers fumble at the obi, but at last it is done. I wrap my hair into a bun at the back of my head.

“That is correct,” Okā-san says upon inspection, but there is a smile in her eyes that more than approves. At this moment, if love were visible, the room would be full of pink light.

I bow at the waist. “Arigatō, Okā-san.”

“Aie, go! Don’t trip, and don’t ruin my kimono!” She waves me away with a wooden spoon. I pull on my longest coat, take our largest umbrella, slip on my geta, and hurry out into the afternoon rain.