Memoir: Ghosts, Magic, and Stories

Who was haunting me as a child?

The dead were omnipresent during my childhood on Okinawa. I could feel them around me day or night. They did not seem to want to do me harm, but my awareness of their relentless misery kept me in fearful dread. I’d try to keep my mind occupied to block them out - watching T.V., looking at my brother’s comic books, listening to records. If external distractions weren’t available, I’d hum to myself. If I was not careful, I’d begin to hear thousands of voices mumbling in pain and unhappiness, their words indistinct. If I continued listening, the voices became louder, pleading, and more insistent. Only once did I allow myself to listen to them. I was alone in my parents’ bedroom. It was the afternoon - I’d returned from school and was waiting for my mother and father to come home from their jobs. My older brother was at basketball practice and Ritsuko, our housekeeper, was completing her day’s work cleaning our house. I was lying on my back on the bed daydreaming when the voices came. The room was brightly lit by the afternoon sun, and I could hear Ritsuko running the vacuum cleaner in the living room. I willed myself to be brave enough to allow them to continue because I was deeply curious about who they were and what they wanted.

 As I continued to stare at the blank white ceiling, faces of young white men began coming into a hazy focus. They seemed to be lined up as if waiting in a queue, but they were motionless. Their features were indistinct, but I could see their eyes were closed and their mouths open as they moaned. I saw only their heads and the pale, unbruised skin of their bare chests. Their hair was cut short. Their murmuring grew louder as they appeared to float towards me, like a camera slowly zooming in. I thought they wanted to drag me into their world, so I screamed until Ritsuko ran down the hall and burst into the bedroom. The moment she opened the door, the faces and voices vanished.