Published: 11/4/2014
Edited: 12/23/2014
7: Lantern Light
When Obon comes around, the House has one of the biggest altars to be seen. It's to be expected, of course, because as a home for orphans everyone was guaranteed to have lost their parents. We put it in the sitting room, where piles of fruit and other offerings cover every free inch of the altar and its surrounding area. A little army of cucumber-horses and eggplant-cows sit lined up between the two lanterns, in front of the long, long rows of memorial tablets listing off the names of our many dead parents.
Perhaps it's because of that that half of the Namikaze compound gathers in front of the House on the first evening of Obon before heading out to the cemetery. Long before our caretakers have managed to distribute lanterns to each of the kids—neverminding the ones they had to carry for the babies, who were obviously incapable of doing it themselves—a crowd of people is already assembled and ready to go. I never really could decide whether their intent was to show us their solidarity by accompanying us or if they just wanted to watch the children toddle in ranks down to the clan burying grounds. Even I find our processions quite a sight, and I'm actually in them.
"Alright, everyone," Auntie Reiko calls over the bustle of the clan. Just about every Namikaze currently in the village has been crammed into this plot of land, this tiny space that holds the bones and ashes of our ancestors. Long, vertical headstones rise up into the air all around us, like topless tree trunks in a stone forest. "Do you remember where to go?"
The older kids drift off in the directions of their parents' graves, having come and gone through this routine before. Minato and Shiori head toward the west end of the cemetery, shoulder-to-shoulder, and of my agemates, Chiharu, Jinta, and Akira all run off together, racing to get to the corner where their progenitors' remains have been clustered together. The adults take the hands of the toddlers and guide them deeper into cement thicket, fingers pointing in their intended directions in the same way compass needles always spin north.
Instead of going off to locate my own parents, I stand at the entrance, watching them go. Their lanterns dip and bob in rhythm with their steps, swaying gently left and right, before fading and vanishing into the darkness. Soon the people around me disperse, and I am left standing alone, watching the undulating waves of a flickering ocean of light pulse up and down and back and forward and side to side and—
"What are your parents' names, little one?" An old man crouches down next to me. His skin sags on his face, clinging to his cheekbones like flimsy wet paper towels hanging from a counter's edge. He is covered in brown, splotchy age spots, and when I see the wrinkles radiating out from around his sunken blue eyes I cannot help but think they look like drooping petals on a slumping daisy. His lips are chapped and his knobby fingers could be twigs on a gnarled tree branch, but his hands do not shake no matter how frail and feeble they appear.
"Yasunari and Kazue," I say. I know exactly where they are buried—on the fourth plot in the sixth row—but I let him take my hand and we hobble together down the thin dirt path leading to them. We move at ninety-degree angles, weaving through the blocks in the grid that is our family's tiny necropolis, before finally arriving at a stout little memorial tablet.
As I stare at those two names engraved into the cold rock's face, Yasunari and Kazue, I wonder what I am supposed to feel today, here on the first night of Obon. Excitement? Most of my cousins certainly are, for Obon means food and games and dancing. Or maybe I should be pensive—Minato's gaze has been wandering in distant lands for most of the evening. Perhaps even sad. Auntie Reiko and Uncle Souhei were certainly looking wistful. They probably have more dead people than living to lead back home tonight, because even if they are retired now, it's hard to forget they're ninjas.
"Let's welcome your mother and father," my elderly escort murmurs. "They'll be glad to see their little daughter."
I look down at the flame flickering in my floral-printed lantern without saying a word.
With my hair pulled up into a bun on the right side of my head, adorned with pink and red flowers and dangling strings of beads, Uncle Souhei presses three hundred-ryo coins into my hands and tells me to have fun. Beside me, Jinta and Akira shout in delight and dash toward the door. Their wooden sandals clack loudly as they cross the porch and run down into the dusty streets.
I don't follow them. Instead, I go and stand in front of the enormous butsudan and look at my parents' ihai with a critical eye, lips pursed. Supposedly they are here with me right now, visiting their only child, but the air around me feels empty, if a bit humid.
"You look very pretty today, imouto-chan," a young woman tells me, appearing at my left. Normally I would be alarmed to have such a stranger materialize in my house, but it is Obon, and the door is wide open. No one would bother to wander a compound not their own on a day like this.
"Thank you," I reply, looking down at the fat pink flowers stitched into my bright red sleeves. Typical cherry blossoms.
"Did you tell your mom and dad hello?" she inquires, leaning forward and bracing her hands on her knees. "You should tell them about how you've been."
"They're not here," I say before I can help myself; I frown, resisting the urge to let my chin jut out.
"Why, sweetie, of course they're here," she exclaims, surprised.
"I can't feel them."
"But that doesn't mean they aren't about! They only get a chance to see you once a year, you know. I don't think they would miss it."
"How do you know?" I ask, more sharply than I intend. But she is not deterred.
"Because they're your family," she replies softly. "And family will always come. It doesn't matter what you've done or even who you are—everyone has a family and everyone knows how precious that is. This is the one time of year when people can reunite with them, both dead and alive. Your parents, they're not any different."
That means nothing, I want to argue. There's no proof, I want to say. But then the air is still and the sound of drums picks up in the distance. I look through the window and see our kinsmen running past, wide grins on their faces.
"Let's go dance," my nameless older sister says with a smile.
A/N: Because between the chapters of Suzu's childhood, there were times when she looked at the foreign culture she'd landed in and felt that she didn't belong.