The Color of Air

by Gail Tsukiyama

  “Easy this morning, yeah,” Leia said. “She’ll be happy to see you.”

  “One more thing: there’s a wheelchair for you and Mama in the back of the truck. It’ll help you to get her around easier,” he said excitedly. “Out of her room to the porch, even outside. We’ll have a ramp built for her. Hopefully she’ll pay more attention to her surroundings.”

  Leia, barefoot and dressed in a flowing muumuu just like Mama wore, followed him to the truck. He untied the ropes and pulled the wheelchair down from the truckbed and onto the dirt with a heavy thud.

  “Look at that, eh!” Auntie Leia said with delight. She touched the leather seat. “I’ve never seen one close up. How did you get it?”

  “When the administrator at Hilo Hospital heard I was Mama Natua’s doctor, they couldn’t turn me down,” Daniel said. “She’s much loved. Everyone wishes her the best.”

  Auntie Leia looked at him for a long moment, her eyes tearing. “Thank you,” she said, her hand touching the armrest, the leather back.

  “Mama still needs to take some blood tests—only way to tell if she has any other existing problems. As my one and only patient, Mama gets my undivided attention,” he added with a smile.

  Leia looked at him, her smile turning serious. “Will Mama get better?” she asked, her anxiety suddenly seeping out, lingering in the air.

  Daniel learned early on that the most difficult part of being a doctor was telling the hard truths.

  He shook his head. “There may be moments when Mama will be more lucid, when she’ll connect with people and everything around her,” Daniel said. “But it’ll be temporary, it won’t last. There’s no cure for senility. I’m sorry.”

  Auntie Leia nodded. “Hard not knowing, yeah. At least now we know to hope for those moments.” She gripped the handle of the wheelchair. “Don’t know what we’d do if you didn’t come home.”

  Daniel felt a rush of blood warm his cheeks. “We’ll make her as comfortable as possible. I’ll give you some exercises that will also help,” he said. “Mama may surprise us.”

  “I hope, yeah.”

  Without another word, Auntie Leia reached out and pulled Daniel into a quick hug before stepping back, embarrassed. He never remembered her ever being someone who hugged. But in that moment her usually stoic gaze was soft and shy, and he glimpsed how she might have been as a young girl, tall and sweet and awkward.

  20

  Awakening

  Mama Natua felt the warmth of the sun filter through the buckling screen that wrapped around the front porch, like a hand caressing her cheek, hovering over her breast. She must have dozed off. For a moment she thought that her husband, Nestor, was alive again and standing next to her. She looked up. “Where have you been?” she asked. It was her no-nonsense, scolding voice. He always knew her real warmth and loving lay just beneath. When there was no answer, Mama caught herself. He’d been gone for so many years. He had fallen one day and was dead the next.

  She was taking a long time to fall.

  * * *

  Mama sat in the chair with wheels that the young man had brought. There was something familiar about him. Her hands had grasped the arms of the chair in confusion when it began to move. She heard her daughter laugh with delight. It wasn’t until the young man pushed her out to the porch that Mama’s stiff limbs relaxed. It felt as if she were a child again, being carried outside for the first time. The warm air embraced her and a light suddenly flickered on in her head. She wanted to cry when she sensed the slow shift of clarity returning. Her memories were usually scrambled. She saw faces and places that didn’t follow in any one sequence and would just as quickly slip away from her, like trying to hold on to water. But Mama knew this place. She knew the sweet, earthy smells, she knew the buzzing and scratching sounds, she knew the creaks and cracks of the old floorboards of the porch, even the rich soil that lay underneath them.

  Mama looked up when she heard voices from the kitchen, suddenly remembering again that the young man was Mariko’s boy. She wanted to tell her daughter and Mariko’s boy how happy she was to be back sitting out on the porch again, but by the time the words formed in her mouth they had already disappeared back into the house.

  He was asking her daughter so many questions.

  “How is she sleeping? Has she gained her appetite back? How are her bowel movements?”

  “Off and on all day. Better. Could be better.”

  Who was this child they were talking about?

  * * *

  Mama stopped listening to them. The porch was always where her heart beat strongest. She closed her eyes for a moment and breathed in deeply, taking in the scents of damp earth and sea salt mixed with sweet pikake and orchids that brought back memories Mama couldn’t forget no matter how hard she tried, sticking to her skin like the white sap from a plumeria tree. Mama had strung her leis at the table almost every day for sixty-five years, the last forty with Leia by her side, keeping an eye on the neighborhood as she worked. Nothing got by her. Didn’t she know the Kalani daughter was pregnant even before she came to her begging for help? Didn’t she stop those Pakai brothers from tormenting that scabby, homeless dog, only to raise him herself to a ripe old age? And didn’t she recognize that little Nori up the road needed a home too? She tended to those who hurt, yeah, and had dried enough tears to fill a pond.

  The only one she couldn’t save in time was her own sweet Leia. All those years ago, there’d been a hurt so bad it stole her voice and she wouldn’t tell Mama. Neither Nori nor Mariko would talk. Tell me. Tell me, she willed her daughter, but Leia wouldn’t or couldn’t and never did. Still, Mama knew she’d found happiness now, more talented at stringing leis than she ever was. The mistake that most folks made was assuming that she didn’t see anything sitting at home stringing up her leis. But it wasn’t so; she saw all the wounded birds. She felt their hurt. She knew they had to fight harder to be happy. They were the ones who always held a special place in her heart.

  * * *

  Mama opened her eyes when she heard a scratching sound. Her gaze followed the path of a green and yellow gecko that had paused and clung to the screen in front of her. She reached out, only to have it scurry away.

  The warm wind picked up. Mama heard the hibiscus flowers sweeping against the side of the house and the rustling branches of the monkey pod tree in the front yard. Like an old friend. She breathed another mouthful of air, catching a faintly familiar scent in the wind, just like those preserved black-colored, thousand-year-old eggs the Chinese grocer used to try and sell her. “I’m no fool, yeah,” she mumbled aloud. “Buried in clay and ash for a time don’t make an egg a thousand years old, yeah, even if it looks and smells like it.”

  Wasn’t the egg, though. Mama tried to remember what the scent was. A thread pulled at her. She suddenly felt that sly, crafty animal creeping back in and trying to snatch away her thoughts again. She could feel it hovering, but this time Mama fought back, tasting her old stubbornness, that quick rush of anger.

  “Go away!” she hissed. Mama’s hand slapped down hard on the armrest of the chair. “Go away!”

  And suddenly the cunning animal slowly crept back at her threats. Mama smiled and sat back in her chair, breathing in and out, only to finally remember what the particular scent in the air was.

  Pele had returned.

  21

  Puli Plantation

  The sugar train released a plume of steam, chugging and wheezing up the mountain toward Puli Plantation. Pedro watched the firebox and tossed a shovelful of coal into the fire to keep the pressure balanced as they headed up the mountain. Koji turned back to glimpse the last bit of ocean through the trees before the train slowed down and curved around the bend on its way to the summit. He’d seen the sight a thousand times and never tired of it.

  As they approached the plantation, Koji felt the heat through his gloves as he gripped the iron lever and applied the brakes to slow the train for the last few miles. Hot and sweaty, Koji hung out t
he open window for some fresh air as the train entered Puli, the last stretch of tracks circling around the cane fields that led back to the train barn. The sky gave off a hazy gray light, the air smoky and warm. Koji coughed, spitting up phlegm. The remnants of the morning’s cane burning of a nearby field remained in the dark cloud of smoke still lingering overhead. Mauna Loa’s eruption did little to disrupt Puli from completing its year-end harvest and getting the sugar on ships to the mainland.

  During the past ten years Koji had cut cane, he’d stood hypnotized in those very same fields watching the cane burning during harvest as the heat pressed up against him. Billows of black smoke rose into the sky as flames raced through the fields. The controlled fire spread quickly, consuming the hidden pests and the leafy tops of the sugarcane, returning the ash to the soil as nutrients. The crackle of the leaves and straw rose in a choking cloud—gloomy and serious and stifling. After, the fire was quickly contained and the fields watered down with hoses before the cane was cut. All that was left were the thin stems, their tough outer layer shielding the raw cane underneath. The scorched stalks leaned over like drunken men, felled by the fire that cleared away the cane trash and by the gravity of their own weight.

  On those windless mornings during the burning, a blanket of pewter haze hovered in the darkened sky. Koji tied his bandana tightly over his nose and mouth as he moved between the blackened rows to cut the charred cane. His eyes stung and watered, his throat raw and sore from the lingering smoke, thick and acrid, that filled his lungs. When he was finished for the day, his clothes were filthy and any fraction of exposed skin was as dark as coal. Koji felt like he was emerging from another world—one as harsh and as suffocating as any volcano eruption, only all of it had been man-made.

  * * *

  Koji applied the brakes again, slowing the train as it passed the newly burned field, an uneasy feeling rising in him again. Ever since the eruption and Daniel’s return, a growing restlessness nagged at him like a dull ache. Koji looked across the blackened cane field and saw himself in its desolation. He’d become acutely aware that he had little to show for a lifetime at Puli. He’d spent the past forty years on the plantation having taken the easy way out, working for lunas who admired his discipline and cutting skills and had even struck up casual friendships with him, while others only saw his worth in the amount of cane he could cut. Deep down he had always prided himself at being the best, which may have been his greatest weakness. The bosses who lived in their big houses on the other side of the plantation had persuaded him to stay by giving him what he wanted, to be left alone and allowed the freedom to come and go. For that he stayed out of trouble and cut all the cane they wanted. Mariko and Daniel had always been his real prize, even if they never really belonged to him. The preferential treatment he’d been given had caused problems with some of the other workers at first. One late afternoon when Koji was returning from the fields, he was stopped by two brothers from his own Kazuko village.

  “Who you to get special treatment?” the older of the two asked.

  The younger brother jumped in. “I see you buddying up to those bastards. You spy for the boss man, yeah?”

  Koji shook his head. He didn’t want trouble, but he wasn’t about to run away from it either. “I’m just minding my own business, eh. You both should too,” he added.

  Things escalated quickly from there. Koji couldn’t remember which brother threw the first punch, but the fist slammed into the side of his jaw. After that, he made quick work of the older brother when the younger one rammed him from the side, both falling and wrestling in the dirt.

  It was Razor who came running, breaking them apart and also getting hit in the melee.

  “Dammit! Stop!” Razor yelled. “When you assholes can cut cane as fast as Koji then you can complain, yeah. Not before!”

  Even after the bruises faded, things were never the same with the brothers, but Koji ignored them and was always grateful Razor stood by him. In turn, he had let Razor down time and again, missing so many labor meetings, but still his best friend had always returned and understood. Koji looked out toward the fields that hadn’t been burned yet, realizing he hadn’t seen Razor in more than a week.

  As it shivered to a stop, Koji eased the sugar train back into the barn. He parted ways with Pedro and walked back up the dirt road to his cottage, only to pause midway and look down at the wide sweep of fields. They spread out before him like a quilt Mariko might have sewn, squares of flat, burned fields, next to those of growing cane that wouldn’t be harvested until next season. The owners kept the cane fields on different yearly rotations to ensure an annual harvest and income. They controlled the plantings, just like they controlled the workers, including him. Koji had conveniently surrendered to a life that Razor worked endlessly to try to change. The years had turned Koji into someone he no longer knew. It hadn’t started out that way; cutting cane had been his pride and provided for his family. Now he was only one of a handful remaining from the early years still working on the plantation.

  Koji stood and looked across the cane fields, but there was still no sign of Razor.

  Island Voices

  RAZOR, 1904

  It’s the harvest, yeah, and I’m finally cutting cane. Got a new dog too. Wandered onto our back porch and refused to leave, so he’s the newest member of Kazoku Village and already family. He’s a big, gray shepherd mix, a hapa dog I’m calling Laki, which means Lucky, because he’s one lucky dog to have found me, yeah. Every day when I drudge back to the village after work, he’s there waiting, nipping at the rope that keeps him from running after me and into the fields every morning.

  We’ve been squatting in the fields cutting all afternoon when I suddenly stop and look up at the sound of laughter, not the happy kind, but a low, guttural, in-the-throat kind of laughter, raw and cold and callous. Been here long enough to know it can’t be good, yeah. When Koji sees me he stops, too. We’re both sweating in the heat and dust as we stand and pull down the bandanas tied over our noses and mouths and listen. If we’re caught by a luna for standing up too long instead of cutting, we’ll feel the stinging slap of his whip across our shoulders and backs that can leave oozing, angry red welts for weeks.

  Still, we stand.

  The laughter is coming from the clearing where the wagons are being loaded with cut cane. A group of Chinese men are gathered there, taunting some Filipino “Sakada” workers carrying heavy loads of cane stalks across their shoulders. Don’t know how the Sakadas take it. If it were me, yeah, I would have shut them up a long time ago. But Koji gives me the eye, reminding me to be careful. He has been cutting cane for almost three years and he tells me to stay alert, to watch everything and remain quiet and cautious while working, tells me who I can trust and who I can’t.

  “Nothing is as simple as it looks, eh,” Koji reminds me. “Trouble can follow you like a shadow, so you need to watch your back, yeah, keep one step ahead.”

  Koji has the ability to ignore it all, while I see the lies and injustices add up. In the fields every day, I hear the Sakada workers whispering their grievances. “They came to our homeland with lies and promises of work and a better life. No schooling, no matter, they say, put your X right there. Is this a better life? Once we arrived from the Philippines, they gave us da dirtiest, most backbreaking work—burning, clearing, and loading da cane onto railcars, ten hours a day, six days a week. Lucky if we receive ninety cents a day!” I look up to see a luna a row away from us. “No talking in the fields!” he yells, snapping his whip. They want us to lick their boots just like the way they have to bow down to the managers and the managers to the owner. I know what the plantation owners are doing. The bastards. They deliberately keep us separated when we’re off the fields so we can’t form any alliances. If the Japanese workers strike, the owners pay more to the Chinese and Filipino workers to take their place. I don’t like how they pit us against each other. I don’t like it at all.

  Still, I listen to Koji and we usually
steer clear of the fights between the different groups of workers, or with some of the lunas who wield their power with brutal beatings to quash our wills, keep us under their thumbs. They’re cruel to be cruel, I say; the smells of fear and blood are what they jack off to.

  We steer clear for as long as we can until we can’t anymore.

  Koji moves first toward the wagons to see what’s going on. He already has a reputation for being the fastest cane cutter at Puli, who works hard and stays out of trouble. It’s only when we reach the clearing that I see what he must have sensed right away. An older Filipino man, carrying a carefully balanced load of cane on his shoulders, is pushed from behind and knocked down by one of the Chinese men. He falls hard, dropping the cane and hitting the dirt face-first. The ugly laughter rises. By the time the man looks up, I see it’s Koji’s friend Efren and his face is covered in dirt and the blood that bleeds from his nose.

  Koji moves to help him up as the crowd quickly parts and a luna on his big, black horse suddenly hovers over Efren, the lash of his whip slapping across his shoulders and knocking him back to the ground.

  Koji hesitates for just a split second before moving toward them.

  “You fool!” the luna shouts, raising his whip again. “Get your ass off the ground and pick up that cane!”

  It happens so quickly I can hardly believe it, yeah. Koji reaches up, grabs the luna by his belt, and pulls him off of his horse, his big body landing with a hard thud onto the dirt. And just as quickly as the dust danced, the luna is on his feet, hand on the pistol strapped to his hip. But when he sees that it’s Koji, his eyes narrow in indecision—reign in his anger—step back, or deal with the bosses. He doesn’t look like the forgiving type, but at that moment we both know Koji is one of the untouchables. The bosses want him to stay healthy and strong for all the cane he cuts. He’s one of the few they’ve ordered not to be beaten.

  Instead, the luna turns away from Koji to pick up his hat and shifts his anger to the gathered crowd.