Astronomy: 1979

Sometimes, Dad took me and Mom out to eat with his friends who were also stationed at Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, United States Marines and their wives or girlfriends, ironed civvies, high and tights and alcohol. I don’t remember seeing any other children during these outings. I’m not sure why. Marines procreate like rabbits.

We were seated to dine at the O Club (Officer’s Club), which was on the base, a banquet hall set up as a restaurant. I might have been five years old. White tablecloths, cloth napkins and nice silverware, Japanese servers in crisp, black-and-white uniforms. Mom dressed in her going-out clothes, a bright red, polyester dress, which stopped above her beige-stockinged knees. A recent perm made her once long and pretty hair look like a black puffball, too much rouge on her cheeks, lashes clogged with mascara, a jacket made of brown-and-white rabbit fur, her Chinese face becoming more flushed as she sipped from her wine glass. I started to feel uneasy as she slurred her words.

Dad with his black-rimmed, military-issued glasses. He had a fresh haircut and wore his favorite forest green, button-down shirt (which Mom hated) paired with plaid pants. Mom said, “Dad not see good,” so that’s why the colors didn’t go well with each other. I knew Dad’s Marine job was to get hidden bombs out of the ground, to fix them so they wouldn’t blow up Okinawan people. “Defuse” them. “Deactivate” them.

Dad once told me there were lots of bombs, shells, and grenades underground, buried in beach sands, in the sewers, under schools. They found many bombs, but there were still many more. There was a big war here, but now everything was okay because the U.S. Marines kept Okinawa safe.

I sat quietly and spaced out. I let my eyes go unfocused in the middle distance until a black Marine seated at our table blurred. In my peripheral vision, I could make out that he was gesticulating while talking. The table erupted in laughter. I didn’t hear the joke.

I shifted inward to maintain silence. A healthy child is full of restless energy and needs to move around, to explore, to make noises, to make mistakes, to talk to others, to interact with adults, to learn how to listen and respond in conversation. But I had to keep everything under a tight lid because that was what was expected of me. My left leg imperceptibly bounced around under the table. I thought about a book on astronomy that I had read earlier that day, a book Dad bought for me some weeks ago. I liked it because it had lots of art, drawings of planets, and things in space. The art filled up the pages, and there were a few sentences underneath the pictures that described each celestial body and event.

Although it was written for children, I didn’t fully understand it, but I understood space was a vast blackness teeming with stars, planets, meteors, asteroids, moons, black holes, comets, and according to Star Wars and Star Trek, spaceships and intergalactic civilizations. I thought about the nine known planets of our solar system. Mercury was super hot. Venus had a poisonous atmosphere. Saturn had pretty rings. Jupiter was gigantic and had an eerie, stormy eye. Only Earth had life on it. Maybe Mars had water. Pluto was super small, icy, and the farthest planet away—

An adult at the table commented that I was very quiet. “Wow, he’s so good. So well-behaved.” Someone else might have asked me a question. I nodded in reply, mute, a small grin on my face, my eyes averted. I listened, everyone talking about me for a minute, about how I sat so still, didn’t make a sound. Now, my right foot twitched incessantly under the table.

I wanted to shoot through the ceiling into outer space. But on the outside, nobody could see my contained roiling energy, my desire to yell and laugh and spin around, to yammer about spaceships and aliens and Astro Boy, my favorite cartoon featuring a boy-shaped robot with rocket boots on his feet that allowed him to fly into the stratosphere, even into space, and he had hidden machine guns that deployed out of a sliding panel in his ass. He always tried to resolve conflicts peacefully, as he was a good boy who cared about others. Or he was programmed to be good, but sometimes the butt guns had to come out.

At the table, Dad lifted his chin proudly and said in reply to the remarks and questions: “Yeah, of course he’s good. Because he knows if he acts up…”

Dad held up his hands, motioning with his thick fingers. Did he make u-shapes out of his hands to signify he was choking an invisible neck? Did he raise his open, calloused palm to demonstrate how his slat-hard hand would glance off my face? I remember seeing both gestures used in various discussions. As dad pantomimed choking or slapping, he made a face that at once conveyed goofiness (with those rolling eyes) and cold fury. He glared at me, an unspoken threat: Don’t fuck around. Be still. Stop your bullshit before it even starts. Don’t embarrass me. Be good.

I was good. A frozen smile on my face for all to see. A deactivated boy.