House of Many Gods

by Kiana Davenport

  NOW, THE SLOW RAIN OF DAYS. THE LONGING FOR SO MUCH THAT was incomprehensible. Some nights she woke alarmed. I must have been crying. My cheekbones ache. Was I crying? Well, it will pass.

  Some days she worked double shifts, but it was just her body. She was somewhere else. She started driving the freeway very late when there was little traffic, wanting the sensation of moving past things with velocity. Some nights she swung onto off-ramps and swerved down roads, looking for streets without lights where she entered a void, leaving the world, her conscience, behind.

  She looked for stoplights, a sudden red eye, through which she sped, uncaring. She drove for hours, fingers nimble on the wheel, the radio dial, the gearshift, as if they were separate from her, small intelligent aliens working as a team. One night she pressed the accelerator to the floor, blood drumming in her head, which seemed to match the tires drumming on the road.

  Eighty miles an hour, eighty-five. She pressed down harder; the car had nothing more to give. It started shimmying, the steering wheel seemed ready to come loose. She stared at her bare foot on the gas, feeling her particles rearrange. Life would soon be over. Her chest ached, the sole of her foot began to burn. She did not have the nerve.

  She drove the freeway till dawn then, with a kind of homing instinct, headed to her coast. As the freeway became a two-lane highway, the tin-roofed houses began, the run-down stores. She pulled into a parking lot and dozed. When she woke, she saw what looked like a corpse under a car, an exhaust pipe in its mouth. Then sunlight shifted and the body crawled into the shade.

  School kids passed, sword-fighting with broken car antennas. “Park boys” swaggered by, spectacularly tattooed, scored with pins and studs, their girls cosmetically pierced, some bruised with using. They glanced at Ana, eyes glinting with hate, then seeing she was local, they relaxed. Finally, she started the engine and headed up Keola Road.

  Lopaka stood out on the lānai, stretching his arms and yawning, a towel draped over his deltoids in a girlish way. Seeing Ana, he turned and went inside. When she walked into the house, Rosie looked away. Ben glanced at her without expression. She sat down to breakfast making small talk, the others so still, she heard herself swallow.

  While they sat there, Gena pulled into the driveway, saw Ana’s car, and slowly drove away. Lopaka finished eating, then stood in the kitchen yelling into his cell phone, clicking it and cursing.

  “I hate those things,” Ana said.

  No one responded. Pua gazed at her, then slowly stood, turned her chair around and ate with her back to the table. When she finished, she got up and walked her gerontological delicacy to her room.

  Ana stared after her, her shining silver braid reaching the backs of her knees. “Aunty, you like I brush your hair today?”

  The old woman paused, then turned and shouted. “Hila hila male!” For shame.

  Ana followed her to her room. “But why, for shame?”

  “Because … your bitter mouth has leaked into your heart.”

  “Niki had to leave. Besides, you said he wasn’t right for me. He was not Hawaiian.”

  Pua shook her head. “Not Hawaiian, true. But one good man. Your moment of good taste.”

  Ana sat in her girlhood room where she always came to when she hurt. Eventually she had brought Niki here. She remembered how his booming voice had filled the house and startled them. How his laughter had infected them. And how his stories of Russia, told with feeling and pain, had stilled them.

  And she remembered her elders speaking out, telling him bits of their histories, stories Ana had never heard. His keen interest in them, his attendance when they talked, had made them feel visible, important. Eyes glittering, they had clasped his hands and talked for hours. He and Noah had listened to old warped records, leaning at Noah’s window while Louis Armstrong and even Puccini blasted across the valley into dawn.

  Ana remembered how the walls had trembled when Niki danced his Russian dances. How children had sat wide-eyed, then got up and joined him. They had tried to teach him the hula. Somehow his presence had made each human and each object step forward, showing their dimensions. When he sang his sentimental songs, old koa furniture had glowed as if newly polished. Faded walls seemed splashed with color. The house itself seemed celebrated. Now everything looked gray.

  She listened to the family talking softly, knowing as soon as she opened her door, they would fall silent. Finally, hearing the house calm down, kids off to school, she ventured into the kitchen.

  Rosie appeared behind her in the doorway. “Not on duty today?”

  Ana touched her temple as if making sure it still housed her brain. “I called in sick. I was driving the freeway all night.”

  “How very extravagant. Considering the price of gas.”

  “Don’t you care why?”

  “I know why. I’m sorry, Ana, I don’t have the strength to comfort you. I’m too busy holding this family together, keeping the young ones out of crime and drugs while Lopaka keeps telling me radioactive parasites are living in our brain stems. I don’t even know if these kids are going to grow up to be normal.”

  She placed her hands on her hips. “And why should I comfort you? You threw that man away. You sent him back to Russia, where he’ll die.”

  “I didn’t send him away. Look, I’m a physician. I’m not the Salvation Army.”

  Rosie studied her. “A physician, but what kind? First you were an Emergency Room doctor. Then a doctor of general practice. Now you’re preparing for OB-GYN. What will you be next? What are you really committed to? All you do is paddle round and round in your sea of self-indulgence. Why don’t you just open a practice in Waikiki, catering to tourists?”

  Ana sat down in shock. “Maybe I have been self-indulgent, but I think I paid my dues …”

  “Yes. You had your mastectomy. A lot of women out here have had them. And quite a few have died. It’s time you faced facts, girlie. You survived. Why not stop whining and move on to the next phase of your life. My God, I’m ashamed of you. Niki was good and decent. A wonderful man.”

  “His year was up. He had to leave.”

  “You could have got an extended visa. You could have married him.”

  She looked down at the floor. “Rosie, he wasn’t like you and me.”

  “That’s right. He came from a country where nine-tenths of the people are starving. Stealing rags off their corpses. He talked funny. His clothes didn’t always match. But, he was a tender, moral human being, trying to do an important thing. He loved you. He said you brought him back to life.”

  “We had good sex. That always brings a man to life.”

  Rosie reached out and viciously shook her arm. “What is wrong with you? Why are you afraid of men? It’s women who are deadly. Sometimes I think men were put here to distract us, so we don’t destroy everything.”

  Ana rubbed her arm “Is that supposed to be food for thought? If so, I’ll leave the thoughts to feed themselves.”

  “Close that bitter mouth of yours! Listen to me. When I lost my daughter, a large part of me died. But what is left, what survived, is learning how to cherish things again, how to be equal to the earth’s provisions. Now, I want you to tell me. What did you survive cancer for? You turn your back on everything that’s beautiful and meaningful.”

  “I don’t.”

  “You do. Your whole life has been a full-hearted rejection of anything too ‘messy,’ too human. You come home when you’re lonely. Otherwise, we don’t see you, you send checks. You punch your speed bag when you’re angry, and I suppose when you need sexual release, you have affairs. Niki was a novelty for you. Now he’s gone, and what have you got? What do you hold on to?”

  She had never heard such cold, derisive comments from this woman. “Rosie, why are you talking to me like this?”

  “Because it’s time. You keep saying you have us, your ‘ohana. You don’t have us. We were your origins. We’re not your destiny. One day you’ll be forty, and you’ll be alone, because you
think the worst thing in life is to be used by another human. Let me tell you something. To be used is what we’re here for. That’s what humans do. We use each other. Depend on each other. You got things all mixed up in your head.”

  She stood towering over Ana, Amazonian and Junoesque. The second child had doubled the size of Rosie’s breasts and hips, turning her body into a massive fact. Then Makali‘i’s death had taken her down to the bone so she looked nearly skeletal. In time she had gained back the weight; it made her face fleshy and somehow more beautiful.

  “You know, Ana, I hardly get out of this house and down the road. But my life is twice as rich as yours.”

  Ana threw her arms around Rosie and, like a child, she clung. “Don’t hate me! You’re all I’ve got. All I ever had.”

  Rosie gently pulled away. “I don’t hate you. You’re my love. But I can’t wet-nurse you anymore. My God, Ana, you’re a doctor. You save lives. Wake up and save your own life.”

  “How? I don’t know how.”

  Rosie sat down across from her. “First off, you’ve got to recognize one thing. You take after your mama.”

  “That’s a lie.”

  “No one ever had the nerve to tell you. You’re both searchers, always looking for answers. And … you’re selfish like her. You do not like, and will not accept, responsibility.”

  Ana shook her head. “You’re wrong. There’s no job with more responsibility than mine.”

  “You get paid for that. If Niki had walked into the ER homeless, and needed medication to save his life, you would have given him the meds for free. Right?”

  “Of course. I’ve done that many times.”

  “But this man needed more. Your time, your love. My God, he must have been terrified when he couldn’t breathe at night. You, of all people, would know how much he needed care, and comforting.”

  “I did care. I cooked, I sewed his clothes. I gave all I had to give. There wasn’t any more.”

  “Which is probably why he left. He knew you didn’t love him.”

  “How could I love a man who’s had a dozen lives. A drifter and a dreamer.”

  “That’s what men do when they have no place to stop. They drift.”

  “Maybe I did love him. But not enough. Besides, people throw that word around too much. They use it like a crutch.”

  “It is a crutch. That’s what you never understood. Without it, we’re just fornicating apes.”

  Ana sat back, so exhausted she felt nauseous. In that moment she could not think of a good reason to get up from that chair, to go back to the city, to go on living.

  “How do you know when you love someone? I mean, truly, unerringly. How did you know you were in love with Tommy?”

  Rosie turned thoughtful. “At first I was in a daze. It’s like I was temporarily blind, and deaf. I felt stolen from myself. When I came out of it, I felt different, changed. Even my footprints had changed. I didn’t care what people thought. Tommy was a mess when he came home. The military had trained him to kill. He got up each morning and thought ‘Who can I kill today?’ I decided to rescue him. Nothing mattered but Tommy.”

  “Weren’t you afraid?”

  “Ana, I was terrified. I’m no beauty queen. Uneducated, never been off this hill. Tommy’s been halfway round the world, slept with women in countries whose names I can’t even pronounce. Folks said he would use me, then leave me. I took a chance. That’s what you do—take a chance, fill in the blanks with faith. You know the man is not perfect, still you promise yourself to love him. Maybe even improve him.”

  She reached over and took Ana’s hand. “Listen. It is not a fairy tale. Smart women do not fall in love. We choose the man, and leap. It works because we make it work. Your mama once said something very wise. She said most men are eighty percent good and twenty percent dreadful. That women should not look for the hundred-percent man, he doesn’t exist. We should look instead for a man whose twenty percent we can live with.”

  She sat back and smiled. “So I chose Tommy Two-Gods. I’m working on his twenty percent.”

  “But, Rosie, how did you know he was the one?”

  “There is no one. I told you, I chose to rescue him. And in the end, I think we most love the one we rescue. They make us rise to our full height. Make us see how human, how heroic, we are.”

  Ana stared at the floor. “That all sounds very noble, but I don’t think I have the guts. Maybe I don’t have the heart.”

  Rosie leaned closer. “You were happy with that man. You didn’t even know it. And you were wonderful to him. Like Pua said, he was your moment of good taste. Ana … it isn’t heart you lack. It’s imagination.”

  WAIHO KĒNĀ I KE ĀKUA

  Take It to the Gods

  THEY WERE MARCHING TO MĀKUA. FOLKS LINED THE HIGHWAY AS far as she could see. By now almost four hundred people were living there in tents and shacks. Homeless in their own lands, they were facing “a final eviction” by armed state, federal, and county police. The National Guard stood ready as Coast Guard ships patrolled the coast.

  Ana studied the faces of her people, light browns and dark, high-yellow browns, and browns as pale as cream. Outsiders called Hawaiians “golden-skinned,”: infused with sunlight, or wet from the sea, their skin appeared copper-colored, brass, or bronze. But in reality they were brown, rich, luscious brown. Watching them as they moved along—tiny birdlike aunties, and big, husky athletes—she saw how their movements had a natural grace. How their steps fit into invisible grooves, attuned to the inhalations of the sea.

  We are water people. And we are tribal. We protect our bones, worship our ākua and our ‘āina. The world sees this as backward. For this, they make us pay.

  She shifted her backpack and water bottle, as Rosie huffed alongside her. Their older uncles had stayed home. Old stalwart vets, they stood neutral on continuance of Mākua’s live-fire war maneuvers.

  “Those soldiers need practice,” Ben argued. “We need be in state of readiness.”

  Ana had stared at the stump of his arm. “Readiness for what? For whom?”

  “Fanatics. Terrorists. Anybody who don’t like America. Ana, you got to understand, men get bored wit’ peace. Even governments get bored.”

  Uncle Tito had agreed. In that house of wounded men, only Lopaka was steadfast in his hatred of war, his concern for the land. Now she watched as he passed in a truck, shouting through a bullhorn.

  “Okay, you folks. Stay in line! Stay calm … Remember Gandhi, and his march to the sea.”

  They advanced slowly up the highway, passing through the towns of Ma‘ili, then Wai‘anae, on toward Makaha, ever north to Mākua. Occasionally they stopped in small groups and rested in the shade while Lopaka spoke from the back of his truck. A news reporter asked why there wasn’t more support. Why thousands of Hawaiians on the coast were not marching with them.

  He answered through his bullhorn.

  “We don’t have more support because folks want to continue believing in ‘Paradise.’ Hawaiians as well as malihini. We tell them our rivers and ponds are polluted, our soil poisoned, people sick, then where’s their Paradise? We’ve stolen their innocence and they hate us.”

  As he talked more people gathered, for his voice was strong and deep, resonating like a striking bell. Ana saw how he touched them at their hearts, binding them all together.

  “I’ve just been told that sheriffs and the National Guard have blocked the road starting at Kaneana Cave, cutting us off from our brothers on the beaches. They’re going to use a pincer movement. I saw it a thousand times in Vietnam. They’ll descend on the homeless from both ends of the beach and also the middle. They’ll come by land and sea and air. They’re going to squeeze them out. Anyone who resists, they will arrest.”

  He raised his voice, looking over the crowds.

  “We’re not going out there to start a riot. Don’t let them corrupt you into violence. If a cop strikes you … do not hit back. Remember, we’re not just marching for Mākua. We’re
marching for our lives.”

  A man shouted up at him. “Ey! Lopaka. Why listen to you? Your house is full of war vets, men who killed. You killed in Vietnam. So, who are you to talk about nonviolence? Who are you to stop the Army from protecting us?”

  Ana saw his bodyguards move in. A chill went through her. She saw that same chill passing through the crowd. Lopaka was becoming a force strong enough to need protection. When he spoke even cops listened, though their faces registered contempt. For here was a man who moved crowds. Ana saw how, without meaning to, he had been lifted to another level. He had become someone they looked up to, and would follow.

  “Yes, I come from a family of soldiers, men who fought in every war. We tried to be honorable, to serve our country when it called. But in return, our country has not honored us. It is not serving us. If you are not with us, step out of the way. We will not be divided!”

  A wave of excitement shifted the crowd. Sheriffs unsnapped their holsters. They had heard him speak before. Perhaps he didn’t know the power of his voice, how it seemed to touch a moral center. Today a crowd of only several hundred had gathered, but what if one day he raised his voice, inciting half the island to rebel? The sick, the unemployed, the disenfranchised. He had that kind of power now.

  “Justice is all we are asking for,” he shouted. “We will march until we reverse this domination. And if they knock me down, someone else will take my place. Victory is just a two-day paddle home!”

  The crowds pressed on until they saw the barricades ahead. Lines of police blocking them from further progress. Folks massed and stood there shouting as Ana worked her way forward, then stood paralyzed. Tactical-unit SWAT teams, state police, highway patrol. And almost every face, Hawaiian. Now half a dozen bulldozers made their way up the highway. The drivers, too, Hawaiian. The military and state were clever, pitting brother against brother so that, to the outside world, there was the impression of total disunity amongst the people.

  Using her elbows to break through, she continued pushing forward, finally confronting a wall of men in full battle dress. Bulletproof vests worn over thickly padded shirts and pants. Holstered guns and gas canisters at their hips, and in their hands big rubber truncheons. Metal helmets covered their ears and necks, and attached to the helmets were dark, convex visors protecting their faces. They looked like man-size beetles. A killer species facing unarmed people.