I nodded, feeling myself blush. I was so happy to be with my boyfriend again.
Dad was one of six siblings, and the extended family gathering for Obon was always madness. We couldn’t all fit in the living room at once, so the sliding doors between the two large tatami rooms at the end of the house had been removed, and a long, low table was set up with cushions on the floor for our meals.
The house was full of bugs, but nobody made a big deal of it. Back home in Chiba even a small fly would cause panic, but Mom and my sister never made a fuss about the insects in Granny’s house. The boys would eagerly run around killing them with a flyswatter, but even so there were still always flies and grasshoppers and bugs I’d never seen before crawling around the room.
All the girls old enough to help went to the kitchen to make dinner. Even my sister was quietly peeling potatoes.
I was put in charge of dishing up the rice. There were two rice cookers sitting side by side. I filled bowl after bowl as six-year-old Ami, the daughter of one of my cousins, put them onto a tray and carried them through to the long table in the tatami room, helped by Cousin Mari.
“First lot of rice coming up! Make way, please!”
Cousin Mari slid open the kitchen door, and she and Ami went past the family altar to where the uncles were sitting around one end of the table waiting.
“Stop daydreaming and get that rice served!” Mom yelled at me from where she stood tending the pans on the stove.
“Oh, come now, Natsuki’s doing a great job,” Granny said, glancing over at me as she cut slices of a stinky seaweed jelly that I hated.
“That child is hopeless. She can’t do anything properly. I get tired just watching her. It gets on my nerves. Yuri, on the other hand, is doing so well, though. She’s already in junior high, isn’t she?”
I was used to Mom saying I was hopeless. And she was right, I really was a dead loss. The rice I dished up just lay flat in the bowl instead of being nicely mounded.
“Look how messy that is! Just let Yuri take over. Such a clumsy child.” Mom sighed.
“That’s not true! She’s doing very well!” an aunt said, flattering me.
I carried on serving the rice as best I could, hoping nobody else would call me a loser.
“That red bowl is Uncle Teruyoshi’s, so be sure to give him lots, okay?” my aunt told me. I piled on as much as the bowl would hold.
“It’s already dark,” someone said. “Not long now before we have to go welcome the ancestors.”
“They’ll soon be lighting the bonfire to guide them to us.”
I thought I’d better hurry up and quickly reached for the next bowl.
“Hey, we’re going to light the fire now!” Uncle Teruyoshi called from the front door.
“Oh, it’s time! Natsuki, we’ll deal with this. Off you go, now!”
“Okay!” I said, handing my aunt the rice scoop as I stood up.
I could hear insects chirring outside. Darkness had fallen, and the world beyond the kitchen window was now the color of outer space.
All of us children followed Uncle Teruyoshi. At the river he would light the fire to welcome the spirits of our ancestors on their annual visit home for the Obon festival.
Yuu was carrying an unlit paper lantern, and I had a flashlight.
The Akishina mountains were in darkness. The river we’d been splashing around in last summer was now so black it felt as though it would swallow us up. As Uncle Teruyoshi set fire to a bundle of straw on the riverbank, our faces glowed orange in its light. We did as Uncle told us and faced the flames.
“Dear Ancestors, please use this fire to guide you to us,” Uncle Teruyoshi said.
“Dear Ancestors, please use this fire to guide you to us!” we all shouted in unison.
As we stared at the burning straw, Uncle Teruyoshi said, “Right then, they must be here by now. Light the lantern, Yota.”
When he said they were here, little Ami let out a strangled shriek.
“You mustn’t shout,” Uncle told her. “You’ll startle them.”
I gulped.
The flame was gently transferred from the straw to the lantern. Yota picked it up and staggered slightly as he cautiously carried it to the house, obeying Uncle Teruyoshi’s warning not to let the fire go out.
“Uncle, are the ancestors inside that fire?” I asked Uncle Teruyoshi.
He nodded. “That’s right. The fire guided them to us.”
As Yota carried the lantern onto the veranda and into the tatami room, the aunts came out to greet us.
“Careful now . . .”
“Make sure it doesn’t go out!”
At their urging, Yota proceeded through to the end of the room where an altar had been set up specially for Obon.
Uncle Teruyoshi lit a candle from the flame in the lantern. On the altar were a cucumber and an eggplant, each with four legs made from disposable chopsticks. These represented the horse to bring the ancestral spirits quickly back home and the cow to slow their return to the other world, making them stay longer in the living world. Ami and Yuri had made them that afternoon, knowing the ancestors were on their way.
“There we are,” he said. “The spirits of our ancestors are now here around the flame. Natsuki, when the candle burns down, be sure to replace it, okay? Make sure the flame doesn’t go out. Otherwise the ancestors won’t have anything to guide them, and they’ll be in trouble.”
“Okay,” I said.
I looked at the table and saw that Dad and my uncles had taken their seats and were already drinking sake, while the women rushed around preparing food and serving it up.
My sister and I sat with the other children. On the table in front of us were large serving dishes of edible wild greens and stewed vegetables.
“I want a hamburger!” Yota said loudly, and Uncle Teruyoshi slapped him on the head.
A grasshopper hopped past a plate of soy-simmered locusts on the table.
“Yota, get rid of that.”
Yota deftly caught the grasshopper in both hands and went to put it outside.
“Don’t be silly! If you open the screen, lots of bugs will come in.”
“Okay, I’ll go feed it to a spider, then,” I said, standing up and taking the live grasshopper from Yota. I took it to the kitchen and gently stuck it on a cobweb. It offered no fierce resistance, just fluttered its wings slightly and became tangled in the spider’s silk.
“What a treat for the spider,” said Yuu behind me.
“I wonder if it can eat something this big?”