Shimura Trouble by Sujata Massey

Edwin said, and Margaret looked at me with sympathy.
    “Please take this small, unworthy token. It’s not very good, but all we could find.” Tom blessedly interrupted the situation by offering Edwin a gift bag containing a bottle of California chardonnay we’d chosen at the Safeway.
    “Very kind. Thank you!” Edwin waved us all to follow him into the tidy living room, which looked as if it had been decorated in the early eighties, with floral-chintz sofas, and lots of rattan. A young girl, her face hidden in a thick copy of Modern Bride, was lying on the carpet close to the air-conditioner. I sat down on a floral-patterned sofa with my father. Edwin put the bottle of wine into a cabinet which I saw already held many bottles of wine and hard liquor, some still in the boxes. So it seemed he rarely drank.
    “Courtney!” Edwin called to the girl on the floor. “I told you before, when the guests come in, serve the pupus.”
    Before I could greet her, Courtney had shot up and gone through the kitchen door. Moments later, she returned precariously carrying a tray of deep-fried hors d’oeuvres. While everyone oohed and ahhed over the golden brown minced shrimp balls and oversized potato and eggplant tempura, I looked anxiously at my father. Fried foods were highest on his list of banned foods. Now temptation was staring at him from a blue and white platter, and he was stretching out a hand.
    “Otoosan!” I whispered loudly.
    “I cannot refuse. That would be rude,” my father said in a low voice before popping a shrimp ball in his mouth.
    Tentatively I took a shrimp ball, biting through the crisp, golden brown crust to taste the freshest, sweetest shrimp I’d ever eaten, finely minced and exuberantly seasoned with biting, fresh scallions and cilantro leaves.
    “This is delicious!” I said after I’d swallowed it. “Who made them?”
    “It’s from a little okazu-ya in Waipahu. If you like okazu snack foods, I can tell you all the best places,” Margaret said.
    “Please do,” I said, wondering how, if the food was take-out, it was so very hot and crisp. The answer came when I glanced at the stove and saw a deep pan of oil. The snacks had been refried at home, making them even unhealthier.
    “Eat more!” Margaret urged. “I’m sorry to say that I don’t do much around the house, ever since the kids got big and I started working.”
    “Ah! Do you work nearby?” Uncle Hiroshi asked, smiling.
    “Quite near. I’m director of housekeeping at the hotel.”
    The smile on Uncle Hiroshi’s face froze, and I imagined the calculator in his banker’s brain had made a judgment on the family. And I too was recalling all the Japanese maids in the old novels I was reading about Hawaii, and how in the newspaper article I’d read, activists had rued that the proposed new jobs in the area would be mostly in the service industry.
    “I’m too tired after work to do much cleaning around here—and I have to admit that I’m not much of a cook, especially of complicated Japanese dishes. I’m not full Japanese like you; I’m hapa, mixed with Hawaiian. Edwin calls me mixed plate.”
    “I guess Rei is mixed plate, too. Her mother is American,” Tom volunteered.
    “Never would have guessed it! Toshiro, did you marry a haole girl?” Uncle Edwin asked in a tone that I wasn’t entirely sure was friendly teasing.
    My father looked blank, and I quietly said that yes, my mother was Caucasian. Haole was a Hawaiian term that originally referred to anything foreign, one example being a tree, the koa haole, which resembled a native koa, but was widely regarded as an invasive pest.
    Great-Uncle Yoshitsune joined us wearing a short-sleeved blue aloha shirt, his face and hands freshly scrubbed. Even in proper dress, he still resembled a garden gnome.
    “Oto-chan used to do a lot of cooking when he was a young man,” Margaret said, nodding her head at Uncle Yosh. “For a while he lived in Honolulu, so he knew the best butchers