The Color of Air

by Gail Tsukiyama

  Mama looked across the table and saw Leia beside her as clear as day, each so much younger. She had finished stringing a lei and held it up to inspect her work. The garland and crown were made for a famous hula dancer who would wear them as part of the story she told in the sway of her grass skirt, the careful movements of her arms and hands, the quick, smooth turn of her hips. Mama suddenly wanted to put the lei lovingly over Leia’s head and onto her shoulders so that she would finally tell Mama her story, the sorrow she held. Instead, she dangled it just in front of her daughter.

  “Who was he?” Mama asked gently.

  Leia looked up at her, surprised at the question, her eyes focused on the lei Mama held up high in front of her, an invitation to tell her story.

  “No one,” she whispered, “no one anymore.” Leia pleaded with her eyes for Mama not to ask again.

  Mama nodded and slowly lowered the lei. “Finished then,” she said, knowing that so many stories didn’t have happy endings.

  * * *

  Take a breath, old woman, Mama reminded herself before moving forward, balancing steady against the table, her hand running over the worn surface before she shuffled the next few steps to the screen door. When Mama finally pushed it open, it was as if a gray veil had been lifted from her eyes. She saw a clear wash of bright morning sky and noticed her beloved monkey pod tree across the yard as the sun’s warmth stroked her face. Mama looked up as the droning noise grew louder still, squinting against the brightness of the sunlight in her eyes.

  “Hurry, yeah!” she heard Nestor’s voice call out to her.

  Mama looked around but couldn’t see him. “Where?” she asked, irritated.

  Nestor was always playing games. “Look again, old woman.” She thought she saw him by the monkey pod tree. The noise in the sky grew louder. Her legs inched forward down the ramp as she grasped the railing for support. With each step she seemed to gain her strength back, stand straighter, remember more. At the end of the ramp Mama no longer needed the railing, arms held out for balance like a toddler learning to walk as she slowly tottered across the grass toward the monkey pod tree on her own two feet.

  “Where are you?” she called out.

  One more step as the ground shook, the house rattled in protest, and the neighborhood dogs began to bark with the noise overhead. Mama looked up just as the roar of five large blackbirds thundered across the clear sky. “Not mosquitoes,” she said as she watched the big birds fly toward Mauna Loa, two more trailing behind. She shook her head. Pele wouldn’t be happy with whatever was going on. After they passed, her gaze returned to the tree where Nestor stood grinning at her.

  Mama smiled. “There you are,” she said, her heart beating at the sight of him. She moved faster, lighter, excited to see him, one step and then another before her legs suddenly buckled under her and she fell heavily to the ground.

  43

  Faith

  The day after Mama’s collapse, Nori sat by her bed and waited for her to regain consciousness. Leia found Mama only moments after she’d fallen in the front yard, still breathing but unconscious. Suddenly nothing else mattered. Nori no longer cared that the bombs dropped onto the vents still hadn’t stopped the flow. She didn’t care about the half-filled box with their useless possessions sitting in the closet, or if the fish market was swallowed up by the lava, becoming nothing more than ashes and memory. All her fears had shifted to the woman lying in the bed in front of her. All that mattered was for Mama to wake up.

  Nori watched her sleep, remembering the time she was eight or nine and had forgotten to take the laundry in before it began to rain. Her angry mother had shoved her against the kitchen wall, her head striking it hard and knocking down the picture she’d made from seashells at school. It crashed to the floor, the tiny shells clattering in all directions, as if they were running away. It only made her mother angrier, grabbing her roughly by the arm and pushing her down to pick them up. Later, Mama had soothed her, gently rubbing the bump on the back of Nori’s head, telling her to lie down and rest.

  “Sleep,” she said, “will make you strong again, yeah.”

  She looked down at Mama now and wished the same for her, realizing how age hadn’t taken away her beauty, only changed it to something deeper; weathered and blessed by the wind and rain.

  According to Daniel, Mama’s vital signs appeared stable but he was worried about all the underlying conditions that could be the causes. He wanted to take her immediately to Hilo Hospital, but Leia had firmly refused. She would do what she knew Mama wanted.

  “When Mama wakes up, I want her to know she’s home, yeah.”

  * * *

  Three days later, Mama still hadn’t awakened. Nori was dizzy from the lack of sleep. She closed her eyes each night, serenaded by Samuel’s intermittent snores, only to be up again before dawn, working in the sweet warmth of her kitchen. Business had slowed since the bombing, the market quieter. The lava flow hadn’t stopped or been diverted. It continued to surge toward Hilo with no remorse. Many of the locals had left Hilo, while others began to pack with conviction. Nori couldn’t begin to think of either. She carried a tray of sushi and another of red bean mochi to put into the display case before she started the coffee, only to glance at the clock to see that it was almost six and Jelly still hadn’t arrived.

  For the past twenty-five years, her cousin opened the market every morning, arriving at a quarter till to turn on the lights, set up the cash register, and make sure there was enough ice in the icebox for the fresh catch the boys returned with. Before the lava began to flow, the market remained busy from early morning until midafternoon. Nori waited now as a pale light slowly filled the market, bringing everything into focus, everything except for Jelly.

  Outside, Nori heard voices. A handful of dockworkers stood in front, waiting for the market to open. She felt a quiet anxiousness creep up inside of her and stepped back, waiting in the shadows a few minutes longer. Nori knew it was silly, but they had a long-held tradition of Jelly opening and she closing the market every day. She wasn’t about to break it this morning.

  The voices outside picked up again, Jelly’s rising above them. “Wait one more minute, yeah, just let me get settled, eh.”

  Nori sighed, her body relaxing. The screen door whined open, followed by the click of the front door unlocking before Jelly quickly stepped in and closed the door behind her.

  “I was just about to send Samuel to check on you,” Nori said, her voice light and steady. She walked toward the front window, reached up, and turned the sign to OPEN.

  “Just in time, yeah,” Jelly said, catching her breath.

  “I was beginning to worry.” Nori said. “Thought you might have left without telling us.”

  “Never,” Jelly reassured her. “Decided to keep the faith that the flow will still stop. Overslept is all, yeah,” she said. “How’s Mama?”

  “Same, last I heard.”

  “Nobody stronger than Mama, remember that, eh.”

  Nori nodded and watched her cousin reach for the change drawer under the counter and place it in the cash register. From her bag, Jelly took out her worn black Bible and slipped it under the counter. It was given to her when they were girls and both baptized by the same pompous, self-righteous missionary. One of the many who had swarmed to the islands like flies, clutching their Bibles and pamphlets, building churches, preaching and converting and saving. Nori never trusted those stern-faced men and women who seduced and cajoled and bribed the islanders to join their churches. They were the same “saviors” who also brought with them the diseases that had killed so many of the early Hawaiians they hoped to convert.

  Jelly had taken to carrying the Bible around after Nobu’s accident. “Calms me, yeah. I don’t understand half of what I’m reading, but trying to keeps me busy, eh,” she’d told Nori, placing the strip of red ribbon between the thin, wispy pages to hold her place.

  * * *

  Nori walked back to the kitchen to finish up her coconut ta
rts, rolling out the dough and readying them for the oven. It hadn’t taken her long to dismiss all those missionary folks, their long speeches and demanding God. She’d only been baptized because her mother realized she could get something from the haole missionaries who had come knocking on their door if she let them baptize her young daughter. So, with the promise of two hens and a rooster, along with a leather-bound Bible, Nori had been baptized. Religion in their house had lasted just long enough for her parents to sell the Bible to buy three bottles of ti root alcohol, eat the eggs the hens had laid, and eventually eat the hens too. She never did know what happened to the rooster.

  When it came to her own boys, Nori declined all religion. Being baptized hadn’t changed Nori’s life in any way. And while Mariko hadn’t been religious either, she had chosen to have Daniel baptized so he could start out in life with every advantage. She’d attended a handful of services before she stopped.

  “Only a bit of water on his forehead,” Mariko always said.

  Still, Nori refused to baptize Mano and Wilson, leaving them heathens. “I’ll take my chances, yeah,” she’d said.

  It was one of the few disagreements they’d had between them.

  “Well, it didn’t hurt him,” Mariko said, adding, “and it might help.”

  She wasn’t about to take any chances.

  * * *

  Nori slipped the tray of tarts into the oven and began to clean up. She was older now and understood that the religion Mariko and Jelly sought had to do with hope. She couldn’t blame them for leaning toward the side of faith. It was something she’d always hung on to when she was young, even if she didn’t know it back then. The only difference was she hadn’t found her faith in a thick black book with onionskin paper, or with a bit of water sprinkled on her head. Her savior had always been Mama.

  44

  The River

  By late morning on New Year’s Eve, Daniel borrowed Uncle Samuel’s truck and drove directly to the Natua house to check on Mama again. Five days had passed since both the bombing and her sudden collapse. Mama remained in a comatose state, the world between the here and the there. Daniel thought again of the little girl back in Chicago, hoping she was at least home and happy. He’d carry the scar of it for the rest of his life. He didn’t want Mama to be his second.

  Auntie Leia led him to Mama’s room, bright with daylight streaming in through the opened curtains. Mama lay on her bed half covered by a sheet, arms to each side of her, tentacles of white hair spread across the pillow. She looked as if she were floating. Daniel was reassured by the slow rise and fall of her chest, the fluttering of her eyelids. Leia hovered behind him as if he could magically awaken her. But after all his years of study, all he could do was check her vitals and wait along with everyone else.

  “Mama needs more care than I can give her here,” Daniel said, trying again to persuade Auntie Leia to move Mama. “She would be well cared for at the hospital.”

  Auntie Leia set her steely gaze upon him. “No better care than what I can give her here, yeah,” she said, closing the door once more.

  Later, when Auntie Leia left the room for a moment, Daniel leaned closer to Mama and whispered, “Wake up, Mama.” Her wrinkled face in the harsh sunlight looked calm, almost childlike. He wondered for a moment if it was such a bad place to be, shaking away the thought as he bent still closer to her ear and whispered again, “Please wake up.”

  * * *

  From the Natua house, it was a short drive to the Wailuku River. Daniel hadn’t been back ever since he was in high school. Before then, his father would always take him to the river when he returned home after weeks working away. And for those few hours, he belonged to just Daniel. As a boy it made him happy to know he had all of his father’s attention. Only now did he realize his father never belonged to anyone for long—he was always searching for something he could never hold onto and hurting so many along the way. “Oily hands” Koji once described him as having. Daniel wondered if his father ever thought of them after he left, only to catch himself; they’d slipped from his fingers a long time ago.

  As the lava surged closer to the river’s watershed, the scent of sulfur had grown more potent. Daniel walked along the main path down to the river, the one place he had avoided for years, and where he still felt his father’s presence the strongest. He turned onto the small trail they had walked down so many years ago, immediately embraced by a forest of tall banyan trees. When he emerged at the river’s edge, Daniel took off his shoes and rolled up his pants, remembering the five-year-old boy walking with his father, laughing when each step in the wet mud sucked and smacked and sounded like a kiss. The river had been rough that day so they couldn’t swim, and instead they hiked along the embankment at the river’s edge. Daniel followed after his tall, lean father, who always seemed hungry, but he was never sure for what. It was hot and muggy, the air filled with the sounds of the rushing river, the high shrill of the birds above, the mosquitoes that buzzed and taunted as he swiped them away from his sweaty, salty body. All he wanted to do was to jump into the river to cool off, but his father kept walking in the breathless heat. It was the afternoon Daniel wanted to know why it was always so noisy.

  His father finally paused. “Island voices,” he’d said, and very little else. He soon grew impatient with Daniel’s questions and began walking again, the white scar on his side dancing up and down like a wiggling worm.

  When his father finally stopped walking, he stood on the edge of the bank and looked down at the moving, churning river. Daniel slowed a few feet from him and wondered why they couldn’t just step into the water near the river’s edge, to cool off. He was so hot. All he wanted to do was touch the water, flick some across his chest and on the back of his sweaty neck. While his father was distracted, Daniel sat on the dirt embankment and scooted down slowly. He was just a few feet from the water when the loose dirt gave way and he suddenly slid the rest of the way down and into the river. Daniel cried out, dragged away by the currents, pushed and pulled down the river by the quick-moving water. His head bobbed up and he saw his father running along the bank beside him, pointing and yelling something he couldn’t hear beyond the tumult of the river. Daniel’s raised arms reached and grabbed, unable to hold on to a rock or a branch as he moved too fast with the rushing currents, swallowing water as he tried to keep his head up, his knee slamming into something hard.

  It seemed like forever, but the river had carried him greedily for just minutes. It wasn’t until the river narrowed and turned that the currents slowed. Daniel flailed and struggled to grab onto something when he was quickly plucked from the river by his father. He’d run ahead, beating the currents and waiting, half submerged, one hand clinging onto foliage by the side of the bank, the other reaching for him, grabbing his arm and pulling him back to shore, his grip so tight it was almost as painful as Daniel’s throbbing knee. His father crouched over him, panting hard, a glint of fear in his eyes as he looked him over. Water dripped from Daniel’s hair and nose, and it was the first time he had ever seen his father scared, the one time he’d held on to him so tightly. It was only then that Daniel started to tremble and cry.

  “You’re okay, you’re okay, you’re safe now, yeah,” his father said, wrapping his shirt around him, wrapping his arm around him.

  His father bought him a shave ice at Oshima’s on the way home, and told his mother there was a small accident at the river but didn’t explain in detail. Daniel had said he’d scraped his knee was all. It was his fault and he didn’t want his mother to worry, or to get mad at his father when they were a family again. It was the one secret Daniel ever had with his father, his finger marks on his forearm remaining for days until they faded away.

  * * *

  Back home that evening Daniel looked around the quiet kitchen, the last of the daylight disappearing through the window. He was edgy. Daniel hadn’t seen Maile since the bombing five days ago, and was resigned to taking things slowly, aware that she needed time. One m
oment she was her old self and he felt like he could tell her anything; the next, she was distant and skittish. Daniel was suddenly unsure of what their future held.

  Hilo’s future felt just as uncertain. At the rate the lava was flowing, it was expected to reach the watershed and Hilo in less than a week’s time. Daniel knew he should be packing, but the thought seemed unbearable. He’d just returned and was settling in. When he left Chicago, he was relieved to know he had a home to return to. The moment he stepped back on the island he felt its embrace. The mainland already felt a world away. Now, where would he go? Daniel couldn’t imagine losing this house, the one lasting memory of his mother. He could almost see her standing by the sink, turning back to him, and saying, “It’s a house, yeah, it isn’t me. You won’t forget me no matter how far away you go. I won’t let you.”

  And yet . . .

  Outside the winds had picked up, rushing through the trees. Daniel heard a splattering of rain against the roof. And still the rain could do nothing to stanch the lava flow, whose heat simmered and stoked from the volcano’s core. A low roar of thunder boomed and shook. Daniel hoped it wasn’t another eruption, Pele venting her anger at the bombing. The thunder boomed again, and just trailing it, Daniel thought he heard something else, footsteps. He listened intently, and a moment later, someone was knocking on the front door.

  Daniel hurried to answer, hoping it wasn’t bad news about Mama. Instead, he was surprised to see Maile standing at the door.

  “Maile,” he said, “is everything all right?”

  “I could use some company,” she said, her hair clinging to her cheeks from the rain.