House of Many Gods

by Kiana Davenport

  She slept for two days and nights and when she woke, her mind felt pure, rinsed clear of everything, allowing only small and simple thoughts, to parse out the large and awful ones.

  She had been home several weeks when one evening, carrying a small parcel wrapped in ti leaves, she and Rosie hiked deep into the valley, beyond where chain-link fences barred them from the mountains. They buried her breast beneath a young kiawe tree while Ana knelt, relinquishing that blood, those cells. Rosie lifted her arms and chanted softly, Ē Ala Ē! Ē Ala Ē! Awake. Rise up. Blessing her flesh so it could rest and recompose, begin to nourish the soil.

  SHE SAT WITH NOAH, LETTING HIM CRY, A WAY OF EXPRESSING what he could not say. Finally, cried out, he pressed a knuckle to his nostril, snorting a thick stream of mucus into the dirt, the impact raising a little fleur-de-lis of dust. And then the other nostril. She leaned at his window like in the old days, and they listened while his record player scratched out an old half-warped Puccini, Madama Butterfly. Ana liked how it thundered out across the yard and up into the fields, where horses slowed midcanter, turning their heads to listen. Even roosters paused, their bright red combs like ears erect.

  Slipping out of her pain and into sound, she talked to him for hours. Noah’s silence gave her freedom to confess. She talked of the harrowing years of med school. The terror and loneliness. The lovely men who, one way or the other, always left. She talked of her illness, her surgery. And how death was an all right thing if one were ready, if one had lived a good, long life. She talked of the father she never knew. Of the woman who had been her mother.

  When she was silent and talked out, Noah reached into his closet, pulling out a mildewed box he had discovered. Inside, a crumbling snapshot of her mother. A slip the color of old peach skin. Rusty hairpins to which her perfume clung. Somewhere Ana’s father had been measured for a hat. Her mother had kept that piece of paper with his name inside the box. That’s all she was sure of. Her mother’s slip size. Her father’s head measurements.

  That night while everyone slept, she spread the slip out on the grass, then lay beside it as if they were two females looking at the stars. Carefully, she turned on her side and laid her arm across the slip as if it were a woman’s waist. She imagined that woman slipping her arm round Ana’s shoulders. She lay like that for hours.

  And she began to dream again. One night, moonlight crept across her face. Someone stood outside her window.

  Ana sat up, thinking she was dreaming. “Who’s there?”

  “It’s me. I’ve come.”

  She called out, half-awake. “Who’s that? Who’s come?”

  “… It’s your mother, silly girl.”

  HULIKO‘A WAHA ‘AWA

  Profile of a Bitter Mouth

  FOR DAYS THEY AVOIDED EACH OTHER, THEY EVEN ATE IN SEPARATE rooms. One night she knocked, and opened Ana’s door.

  Ana looked up frantically. “What do you want?”

  “I’m here for you. What do you need?”

  “I need you to go back to San Francisco.”

  Her mother puffed a cigarette and slowly exhaled. “Ana, I didn’t come to watch you suffer. I want you to get well. More than anything I’ve ever wanted in my life.”

  “And why is that?” Ana asked.

  She looked at the cigarette and stabbed it out. “I’m your mother. I love you.”

  Ana’s voice was low and calm. “Perhaps you’re here because you want to feel remorse. You’re afraid it’s an emotion you’ve missed out on.”

  Anahola moved into the room, making the air feel lethal. She sat on the windowsill, gazing out. “I know you resent me. Possibly you hate me. I also know the best thing I ever did for you was leave.”

  In spite of herself she was struck by her mother’s enduring beauty. At forty-eight she was still fit in that full-bodied way men called voluptuous. Except for tiny squint lines, her face was unlined. A pampered face, not a mother’s.

  “Please. Go away. I don’t have the strength to deal with you.”

  “Don’t talk to me like that. I’m still your mother.”

  “Well, yes. You gave birth to me.”

  That was how it started. The woman showing up, shocking and then intimidating her, so that Ana struck back. Neither realizing that their arguing might be a way of trying to connect.

  Unconsciously, her mother lit another cigarette. “You know, when you were a child …”

  “What do you know about my childhood? Folks say you couldn’t even change my diaper.”

  “That’s true. Wet diapers always had the smell of death to me. But I taught you everything I knew. God, you were an active child, but sensitive, alert. One glance from me would calm you down. Like those dogs that herd sheep by eye contact.”

  Ana studied her. “Did it ever occur to you that the sheep are terrified of those dogs? Look … I want to say something that might help you. I didn’t get cancer because you abandoned me. It’s not something a mother could have taught me to outsmart.”

  Her voice shook. Normal conversation with this woman was something she could not seem to master.

  “So you don’t need to feel guilty. My life is in my own hands now. I’m the only one responsible for me. They say this knowledge comes when women hit their forties. But cancer speeds things up, you get smarter fast.”

  Her mother answered softly. “I see you have a clever tongue. That’s good. But don’t kid yourself, Ana. You want your childhood back. We all do.”

  She jumped to her feet, her hands on her hips. “Who in hell … do you think you are? Strolling back into my life like this. You are so incredibly ignorant of who I am. Who I have become.”

  “No, I’m not. I know you better than you think.”

  “How? By keeping up with me through Ben and Rosie? You should have had the nerve to walk away completely. Instead you cheapened both of us with your random visits, your pathetic checks.”

  She shook her head. “I never claimed to be sure of every move I made …”

  “Look, I’m very tired. I wish you’d go. There’s nothing left to say.”

  Anahola moved forward, as close as she dared. “There’s a lot to say. Let me do the talking, tell you how proud I am of you. How …”

  “No. All you had to tell me you said years ago. On your way out the door.”

  Ana was suddenly aware of the silent house. As if each room, and each thing in that room were holding its breath. She pictured her aunties and uncles listening, poised like strung marionettes. She heard the ticking of a clock, a boar-hound’s labored breathing. Through the window she saw a rusty van drive past, letters painted on its side. NOW SELLING FRESH PORK. What had they been selling before? She swayed and sat down in a chair.

  “Don’t you understand? In the end, you’re not that interesting to me. I don’t love you. I don’t hate you either. I don’t really think about you.”

  Anahola tried to hold herself together. “Of course you do. As a mother, I did not fulfill my obligation. I lacked a moral sense of indebtedness, and I have influenced you incredibly by my absence. Forgive my immodesty, but I’m probably the most important person in your life.”

  She sat shaking till the woman left, then locked the door behind her. That night she wept so hard, her chest ached deep inside where tissues were still mending. Finally, she sank into a half sleep remembering how, as a child, she learned to swim with her eyes open, looking for her mother’s body on the ocean floor. Aunties said she had crossed the ocean on a ship, and since she never sent for Ana, the girl thought maybe she had fallen overboard.

  Then letters came, and she waited to be sent for. Each day she swam underwater, listening to the clicking of the reef. Maybe her mother was Morse-coding her from California. Months had passed. She and Rosie eavesdropped as their elders discussed her mother.

  “Big city … many folks … she’ll have to beg for work …”

  She had pictured her mother kneeling, and begging. Her face eye level with the waists of white men.

 
She heard her aunties whispering again, “Buggah is keeping her … haole hands all over her …”

  She had imagined her mother with white man’s fingerprints all over her body. The first time she came back to visit, Ana had glanced at her arms and legs looking for telltale prints like dabs of flour. Each month letters came, and in time, postcards from foreign countries. Through the years, the myth of her mother grew, embellished and hung like tapestries. And as they grew older, Rosie’s attitude to Ana’s mother changed.

  “Not easy for her, on the mainland all alone. Who rubs her back with kukui oil in that spot between the shoulder blades you cannot reach? Who lomis her feet, and scalp? And brushes coconut oil through her hair? This man, he probably don’t care if she lives or dies.”

  “She made her choice,” Ana said. “She’s free.”

  “Free? She’s a brown woman in a white man’s world.”

  Now Ana stayed locked in her room, waiting for her mother to be gone. Through the walls, she heard her in conversation with the family. Heard how she had erased herself, her origins, speaking island Pidgin like someone who had learned it as a foreign language. Days passed, but the woman did not leave. One night Ana packed her bags and drove back to Honolulu.

  SHE FOUND THAT HER ILLNESS ENGENDERED A RATHER WARPED but healthy sense of humor.

  “Cancer’s very liberating,” she told friends. “Except for dying, there’s not much more life can do to you.”

  She began to be aware of each thing she ate, how deeply she slept. She policed her thoughts, blocking out the negatives so that by sheer force of will she did not think about renegade cancer cells. She did not think of her mother. Each morning she met the day serenely. She meditated, watered her flowers. She went back on duty part-time.

  Knowing her hair would fall out with radiation and chemo, Ana cut it short, then bought a wig. She began to reexamine her life, how narrow it had become, how each day, each hour had been circumscribed by her work. She looked at rigid pantsuits in her closet, all hung with hysterical precision. She tried on the wig and cried. It looked like a helmet. She threw it out, threw out half her wardrobe.

  One night she came home and cautiously opened her front door. Her mother barefoot, in a suit, vacuuming the rug. Ana stood paralyzed then half ran across the room.

  “What … are you doing here?”

  Anahola shook her head. “I don’t know what I’m doing here. I just know I’ve got to be here. I want to help you, show you how to be …”

  “What? Disfigured?”

  She reached down and pulled the plug on the vacuum cleaner, then grabbed and shook her mother’s arm. “You cannot do this. Get out. Get … out!”

  Her mother struggled to pull away. “Whether you like it or not, I’m here to see you through your treatments. And everything else, until you’re healed.”

  Ana’s voice turned deadly and calm. “I could kill you for invading me like this.”

  “Go ahead. Hit me if it makes you feel good.”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you. That would validate you. Maybe you’d even slap me back. A little mother-daughter confrontation.”

  They stood paralyzed, afraid of where the next few words might take them. Anahola leaned against the wall, feeling her lip where she had accidentally bit it in the struggle. She carelessly wiped at the blood, blurring her mouth so it looked as if she had two mouths.

  “You want me to grovel. Say I’m sorry. I can’t. I don’t possess the ‘sorry’ gene. Neither did my mother. Neither do you. I’m not sorry that I left. But I’m here now because I don’t want you to die.”

  Ana sank into a chair. “I’m too exhausted to die.”

  Her mother sat down on the rug, hugging her knees. “How many letters did I write you through the years, trying to explain it? That not every woman is meant to be a mother.”

  “Oh, I remember them. Interesting reading for a ten-year-old girl.”

  “… how some of us don’t have that drive, that urge. I never had …”

  “… a role model.”

  “That’s right. I didn’t know who my real mother was until …”

  “… you were sixteen. They had lied to you.”

  She knew her mother’s history by heart.

  “Ana, do you think my life has been easy?”

  “Yes. And irresponsible. You’re smart. You have a college degree. What did you do with it? Besides become some white man’s mistress.”

  Anahola smiled. “Such a quaint, outmoded word. In fact, he was a brilliant man, a researcher in immunology. He put me through university, made me his lab assistant. It was fascinating, a job that gave me dignity and income. To most of his colleagues I was just his ‘brown girl.’ Sometimes they mistook me for the maid. But he was honorable, he loved me. And in the end, I married him.”

  Ana stared, taking her full measure. “That’s how you could afford to send those monthly checks. So, where is your … generous husband now?”

  “He died, several years ago.”

  She had always predicted that her mother would pay. Yet Ana did not feel the bitter rapture she had anticipated. She got to her feet and moved to the kitchen, pausing in the doorway, struck by the figure of her mother on the rug. Barefoot like an island girl, her curly hair undone. The sun lay on her back and cast her face in shadow; in that moment she looked fragile and bewildered. Something caught in Ana’s chest. She felt the tug of her fresh scars. She came back carrying cups of tea, and placed one on the rug beside her mother.

  Anahola sighed. “You know, it could have been much worse. At least I left you with ‘ohana … folks who loved you, and doted on you. That’s why you’ve remained intact.”

  “Of course. And, because of having been abandoned, I’m now somewhat cynical and hard. Which, I suppose, is good. It will help me make it in medicine, which is so competitive.”

  “And make it out in the world.”

  “I’m not going out into the world. I know where I belong. And who my people are. And who I am.”

  Anahola sipped her tea. “I see. You’re going to play the martyr. I’m the fall guy, the one who warped you. So you will always cling to this safe and limited island life.”

  Ana put her cup down. “I’m fighting cancer. How fucking safe is that?”

  In the silence she stood. “Well, we’ve had our little chat. Our cup of tea. Now, why don’t you go back to wherever you call home. However empty it may be.”

  “On the contrary, Ana, my life is full. I have friends, a career, projects for the future. But right now my only concern is you. I’m not going anywhere.”

  Ana closed her eyes, her lids fluttered with exhaustion. “Then, it’s too bad I didn’t get cancer when I was four years old.”

  Her mother finished her tea and slowly stood. “I see I was wrong. You don’t want your childhood back, you want a better version of it back. Your childhood is over, Ana. So is mine.”

  She carefully dabbed on lipstick, pinned back her hair, and stepped into her high heels. At the front door, she squared her shoulders and stood straighter, looking somewhat formidable.

  “You’ve told me I don’t interest you that much, so this might cheer you up. In time I will become even less important to you. It’s called ‘cell fatigue.’ The brain slowly flushes out the pain of hurtful memories so you remember things, without the pain. And after a while, you even stop remembering them. So, why not use me while I’m here? While you still remember me.”

  SHE WATCHED CHEMICALS DRIP INTO HER BODY, KNOWING THEY were weakening her immune system, killing good cells as well as bad. She felt they should have been taking things out of her body, not putting them in. Feeling sudden affection for what now seemed endangered, Ana cupped her right breast thoughtfully. Then she remembered it was all endangered, her brain, her liver, her lungs. Sometimes she lost all sense of herself. No longer remarkable, or unremarkable, she was a simple organ fighting for its life.

  Her mother didn’t bother her again. Ana hoped she had gone back to
San Francisco. Then she began to hallucinate, seeing women everywhere who resembled her. A woman in sunglasses on a bus, a woman under an umbrella. One day she realized the woman approaching her was her mother.

  “I rented a studio nearby.”

  Ana watched cars passing in the street. “How can you humiliate yourself like this?”

  “Humiliation is healthy. It keeps us realists.”

  After her third chemo treatment, her hair began to fall out. Now she was wearing a baseball hat, but her mother could see thin wisps protruding round her ears.

  “How are the treatments? Is there much nausea?”

  “Not bad. I’m back on duty working light shifts.”

  “Well, do you … want to have a drink, and chat?”

  Ana stared at her. “What in the world would we ‘chat’ about?”

  “The to-and-fro of life. The in-between.”

  With no sense of it, she reached out and touched her mother’s arm. “I know you’re concerned. But, please, go back to San Francisco. Rosie will keep you up to date.”

  On the phone, Rosie tried to smooth things out. “Ana. Let her help you.”

  “It’s too late. I’m a full-grown woman, not some doll she can play with when she feels maternal. She makes me want to scream.”

  “Maybe you folks should drive back to the house, sit down with the family. Maybe it’s time for ho‘oponopono, talk things out. How else you going to cleanse yourself of rage?”

  She felt the skin on her head retract. “It’s my rage. I’ll do what I want with it. Maybe it’s what keeps me going.”

  Her cousin answered thoughtfully. “Have you considered that maybe your rage is what caused the cancer?”