Shimura Trouble by Sujata Massey Page A

and fishmongers. He used to take my mother-in-law until she passed away ten years ago, may she rest in peace. Now the only one likely to do any cooking is Courtney, and that’s just because she so obsessed with planning her own bridal reception.”
    “Are you?” I asked, smiling at her with curiosity.
    “Am not! I just like the pictures, the clothes, the…stuff,” Courtney said with a sigh.
    “Between Harry Potter and those bridal magazines, my kid lives in a fantasy world,” Edwin said. “Thank goodness you gotta be twenty-one to get married here—otherwise, she’d be picking out a husband when she start her senior year!”
    “Daddy, please!” Courtney was bright red by now, tears starting in her eyes.
    “Tell me about where to shop for fish, Uncle Yosh,” I said quickly, to change the subject.
    “Tamashiro’s on North King Street, in Palama. I don’t drive no more so Margaret, you should go there,” Uncle Yoshitsune chided. “I hear they sometimes still get opihi.”
    “Too far, too much trouble,” Margaret said, smiling easily.
    “What are opihi?” I asked.
    “A small type of shellfish that clings to rocks. Harvesting it is quite dangerous,” Margaret said. “What they call it in English, Edwin?”
    “Limpet,” Edwin said. “It’s scarce, but it sure makes tasty poke.”
    Poke, pronounced po-kay, was Hawaii’s version of ceviche; I’d had it with tuna or octopus many times. Suddenly I had a yearning for it. This trip still had potential, at least from a gastronomic perspective.
    “We have some things for you.” My father gestured toward the dozen or so gift bags we had brought with us. According to Japanese tradition, I had carefully wrapped each gift, and then put each box in an individual shopping bag.
    “Oh, I don’t need nothing,” Uncle Yosh said.
    “Presents? Thanks!” Courtney seemed to waken up as she reached for a bag containing her gift certificate to Delia’s, and her parents eagerly leafed through the bags, looking for the ones labeled with their names. Aunt Norie had bought Margaret a beautiful silk scarf, and I’d found a book on new uses for green tea for Edwin.
    “Where’s Braden? We have something for him,” I said. Tom had chosen the gift, the very latest Nintendo game from Tokyo’s Akihabara electronics district.
    “The boy suppose to be here, but running late. We should go ahead,” Edwin said.
    Everyone seemed pleased with the gifts my father and I had chosen, and Norie had sent over with Tom and Uncle Hiroshi. The reaction I cared about was Uncle Yosh’s to the album I’d made. He himself on the sofa, turning pages slowly as I stayed nearby, ready to answer questions. A strange expression came over his face after a few minutes of studying the album.
    At last he spoke. “I heard a lot about these people. But why don’t you have any pictures of Kaa-chan?”
    I felt bad about Harue having been disowned. “It was the turn of the century, and perhaps any family pictures of her didn’t survive, or if they did, weren’t recognized as such by us. I’m so sorry; I want to go back and look again…”
    “I have an idea,” Tom said brightly. “Perhaps we shall learn the name of her old schools in Japan, and get childhood photographs that way. We were able to find such photographs for the males in the family.”
    “She didn’t go to school.”
    “What?” I exclaimed, shocked. The Shimuras were an intellectual family.
    “She had a governess, she told me. Learned all these fancy ways of talking—guess it was good over there, but hard here. People laughed at her Japanese,” Uncle Yosh said, shaking his head. “Sorry to say, I was embarrassed many times.”
    “Really,” I said. This corroborated everything I knew about the folkways of the Shimura family. I wanted to continue, but Edwin cut in.
    “It’s time for eat. Our dining table isn’t so big, so we serving food in the kitchen, and you can bring it out here. Please, come try.”
    My father had