House of Many Gods

by Kiana Davenport

  “Now it’s your house, too,” she said.

  “I will have to first consult the house. See if it accepts me.”

  Ana saw how carefully he moved. How softly he talked. Even when he brought her a glass of water he walked bent over like a child, careful not to spill a drop. As if he were on probation. As if, if he did not measure up, they would send him back. The years would unbend him. She knew one day he would shout again, stomp around like a Cossack, perform his crazy Russian dances. But this was his quiet time, of coming back to life.

  Some nights he jumped up and looked around.

  “It’s all right, Niki. You dozed off.”

  “Oh, Ana. How good it is to lie still, listening to weather, and know it cannot kill me. That I am growing strong again. And how very good to lay my head against your belly, hearing our child’s beating heart.”

  The baby kicked, which made her right hip throb. Her body was bloated now, her slender wrists looked wrong. The child felt huge, long overdue. For months Rosie had taken her to the ocean for ‘au‘au kai, her sea bath, letting waves sway her belly back and forth to loosen the child so it would not stick during birth. Now storms prevented sea baths, and she missed the sensation of weightlessness, of all her organs floating.

  “My clinic is going to have home births and water births, like in your country. I don’t understand why I can’t do that now.”

  Niki implored her, “Ana. This one time I ask you, please. Be prudent. Have our firstborn in hospital with real doctor. We do not know what to expect. With my warped genes, we could be starting brand-new species.”

  She almost laughed, but flames reached out, her insides seemed to crackle. Then sudden stillness. A capricious child. It had been in the “White Nights” of Russia that her body visibly began to change. A line began to grow upward from the bottom of her abdomen; another started down from the top. Her alawela, scorched path. Now Ana looked in a mirror, at where the dark lines had almost met.

  “It’s time for kuakoko, bloody back.”

  Niki looked alarmed.

  “… Childbirth.”

  “Cannot be! Two more months yet.”

  “No one is listening to me,” she said. “This child wants to be born.”

  “Too soon,” he said. “Too soon.”

  And yet the family was already in preparation. A pig had been fattened for the birth feast. Old aunties sat around calling on the ‘aumākua, family gods, imploring them to come to her in dreams and give her child a name. Without this, they could not compose her name chants. One night in her sleep, the gods did come, decreeing the inoa p?, the name given in darkness. Ana would not tell them what it was.

  And as her body swelled, old tūtū women lomilomied her body, massaging especially the stretched skin of her belly. They gently manipulated the baby, making sure she was in the right position.

  “Lift up your arm.”

  Automatically, her left arm rose.

  “A girl! For real.”

  They studied her right breast where the nipple stood out brown and firm.

  “Ah! Maka pua‘a. Pig nipple. Means baby will nurse good.”

  And, they made her observe all the kapus. No scaling of fish, or the baby would have rotten breath. No eating mountain apples, or she would be stained with red birthmarks. No eating of bitter or too-salty foods, or she would be born with everlasting thirst.

  Ana rebelled and bowed to her craving for kimchee, for Hawaiian salt and seaweed. Week after week, she gorged herself.

  “Auwē!” old aunties cried. “The child will have the face of a crab.”

  “Rosie, you don’t believe this nonsense, do you?”

  Her cousin shrugged. “I told you before. Pēlā paha. ‘A‘ole paha. Maybe. Maybe not. But it is better to believe.”

  TIME MOVED FUNEREALLY SLOW. NOW SHE COULD HARDLY WALK. Some nights she woke fighting for breath, as if the child were trying to smother her from the inside. Small things began disturbing her. A cousin’s haircut. Tommy’s whistling was off-key. Rosie’s hand on her shoulder did not feel sincere.

  One day when she woke her body was numb. It lay there like a log, not getting the message from her brain. The message was fear. The child would be born missing an arm, a leg. Or, she would be too perfect, Ana would love her too much. She would shoot out of the womb like a bullet and keep going, out into the world. And she would take Niki with her. He would forsake Ana for their child. She would be alone again.

  She grabbed his hand as he laid a damp cloth across her chest.

  “I don’t want this child! I just want us. To shout when we’re angry, make love when we feel like it, eat when we want. There’s a whole life I haven’t lived. I want to live it now, with you.”

  He saw she was panicking. “Ana. Nothing will change. Only what you want. But now you must talk baby still. She is too early.”

  “I don’t want to talk to her. I don’t want to have her. I want to change my mind.”

  Rosie laid a calm hand on her forehead. “You are panicking. And why? It’s not the pain. It’s not the weight. For the first time in your life, you’re not in control. You’re feeling helpless.”

  Ana lay back against her pillow, panting.

  “It was the same with me,” Rosie said. “At first I hated pregnancy. Makali‘i’s father planted his seed, doubled my size, then deserted me without giving her a name. I felt trapped, imprisoned. I thought of suicide.”

  “How did you overcome it?”

  “Pua. She has always been the wise one, though we made fun of her. One night she came when I was trying to throw out the child. She put my left hand on her Bible, my right hand on the KUMULIPO. And she said ‘Pray.’ I said ‘Who should I pray to?’ And Pua said, ‘That is your decision. You see, you still have control.’ It was like a thunderclap. My body was bloated and useless, but I could make decisions. I still had that power. So do you.”

  “This is a rich time for a woman,” Rosie said. “So rich our emotions get confused. Much fear, much guilt. Giving birth is such a sacrament sometimes we think we don’t deserve it. It’s the only time we transcend the merely human.”

  Ana shook her head. “I don’t want to transcend. I want my life back! My ankles.”

  “Stop being childish. Embrace these days. And be prepared for what comes next … ‘Īloli. That blizzard of emotions that comes in late pregnancy. The blues. Then downright grief. This is a time for flushing all things out.”

  AS ROSIE SAID IT WOULD, IT CAME. IN WAVES LIKE MULTIPLE ASsaults. Every source of pain she had denied, perversely turned away from. The grandmother who never deigned to know her. The grandfather she only came to know so late. Her mother, who had not wanted her, had turned her back on her. She mourned that proud and lonely child.

  She thought of the plumber, Sam, a man of grace and laughter, whom cancer took while it spared her. She remembered him squaring his shoulders, accepting that he was dying. She should have held him, said she loved him, that he would beat the cancer. What would it have cost to lie? She had deprived him of the dignity of hope.

  She thought of Niki, all he had suffered. Parents sacrificed. His young wife, melting into snow. Things he would try to put behind him that would haunt him all his life. She thought how she had let him go, had almost lost him, and how she did not deserve him now, did not deserve his child. She held her stomach and grievously wept.

  “Bedney Ana!” Niki cried. “You are experiencing immense physical changes. Your brain, and glands, the metabolic system … all … yam-burg and skolzko!”

  And each night, silent as a ray, Makali‘i came, easing into a place between Ana’s shoulder blades. The niece she had ignored until it was too late. For weeks, she was Ana’s nightly execution.

  Then came the memory of her surgery, of waking in the Recovery Room, a doctor peering down. Then twilight, Rosie dozing in a chair. It struck her now how beautiful it was to come back from the dead and see someone sitting in attendance. To know another human cared.

  What Ana
grieved for now was not her breast. What she mourned was her abject aloneness all those months and years that followed. Nights when she sat like an old woman on her bed, turning the pages of a calendar. Nights she had wrapped her arms around herself for comfort.

  How could a human survive like that? Like a plant without rain, trying to water itself. Then she remembered that there had been someone there with her through months of chemotherapy and radiation. The mother who had come back into her life so late. But, she had come.

  ‘IKE ‘IA NĀ MAKA I KE AO

  The Eyes Are Seen in the World, the Child Is Born

  ROSIE PULLED BACK THE SHEET AND STARED AT ANA’S BELLY. SHE was huge, her skin stretched tight. She examined between her cousin’s legs where she had begun to dilate.

  “Soon time. Doctor said bring you in tomorrow.”

  Near noon Ana heard gravel crunch like things deep-frying, and looked out the window as a car drove up. Earlier in the week, her mother had arrived in Honolulu.

  “She’s helping Niki finish footage of his film,” Rosie said. “At the Hope Institute for damaged kids. And of course, she’s here for you … to witness this event of childbirth.”

  In the silence they watched Anahola stepping from her car, high heels sinking in the dirt, her hair exuberantly curling in humid air. Yet her uptilted head accented a certain pride of carriage.

  “It seems so little to ask,” Rosie said. “She saved your husband’s life. She has saved all our lives, one way or the other.”

  “I know that. I’m very grateful.”

  Rosie turned to her. “What a meager little word. Hila hila male! For shame! We’re a clan of proud and headstrong women. Our emotions are big! Oh, cousin … open your heart. Break this pattern now. ‘Oki all the bitterness that eats each generation of the women in your family.”

  She took Ana’s hand. “Let your daughter grow up knowing her grandmother. If you don’t, I promise she will make you pay.”

  ———

  NIKI SAT AT THE TABLE WITH THE FAMILY, AND NOW AND THEN HE gazed at Anahola. Each time he met her, profound gratitude rendered him almost inarticulate. Yet, knowing her history with Ana, he felt concern. During the meal, she seemed almost shy, as if unsure of her welcome.

  He cleared his throat and leaned forward. “Your name is very beautiful. Anahola. Hourglass.”

  Pua reached out and took Anahola’s hand, recalling her fiery temper when she first came to live with them, pregnant and cast out by her parents. Her beauty that had mesmerized the youngsters. Old aunties remembered how she had swum with little Ana clinging to her neck, teaching her to be alert for stingrays. And how, during tsunami alerts, she had tied Ana to her back and run up into the mountains.

  While they talked Niki lowered his eyes, touched by how they were telling Anahola they remembered. Hours later, they were still reminiscing, when Ana appeared in the doorway, water cataracting down her legs.

  “Her sack has broken!” Rosie stood. “No time for doctors. Someone fetch midwife, and chanters.”

  “My God, it hurts,” Ana cried. “Make it stop hurting.”

  “Stop? Girlie, it has just begun.”

  Rosie steered her to her room while folks pushed the table to a corner. The floor was soaped and rinsed and sheets were spread, upon which lauhala mats were piled until they were knee high. When the time was right, Ana would squat on them to birth her child.

  Youngsters ran for the old midwife while aunties gathered on the lānai, noting the shape of clouds, the flight of birds, the way trees bent and swayed. For these all might be hō‘ailona, omens that foretold the infant’s future. Soon the kitchen was fogged by boiling water through which children peered, having an eager, frightened time. Minutes passed slowly and very fast. Then Ana wobbled back into the living room.

  “Labor pains begin for real. Now she must walk to and fro.”

  She dragged her body in and out of rooms, leaning on the walls, her stomach appearing in a doorway, and then the rest of her. After a while she was given tea from the bark of the hau tree.

  “Makes baby slippery, eases her passage through the narrow place.”

  Every half hour Rosie laid her down to palpate her abdomen.

  “It’s good to hāhā your belly, make sure baby’s in right position.”

  Aunty Ginger, ever the quiet one, suddenly spoke out. “This going be a long birth. We need gather pōhuehue.”

  Lopaka was dispatched to the sea to gather sixteen leaves of beach morning glory. He picked them swiftly, plucking the first half with the right hand as he prayed to Kū, god of medicine. Then he plucked the rest with his left hand, praying to Hina, goddess of medicine. The leaves must not be mixed up. Those he had plucked with the right were given to Ana to eat. Those plucked with the left were crushed and rubbed on her stomach.

  She lay back chewing, praying the leaves would hasten birth. She chewed until leaves turned to saliva. The pain seemed never-ending. Then abruptly it subsided, and it was like walking through a cool, clear moment of a dawn.

  Niki knelt beside her. Even children gathered, big-eyed and attentive. Only her mother kept her distance, lingering outside the room.

  Suddenly Ana cried out. “My father! He will never know this child. Oh, I want to see him …”

  Anahola turned away, her hands went to her face. Then old Ben walked out to the yard; they heard him grunting in the weeds. He came back carrying a hefty stone and put it down near Ana’s bed.

  “Child. Here in this pōhaku is your papa.”

  She bent forward, staring. Because stones had such mana for Hawaiians, she felt her father’s presence.

  “Please. Bring him to me.”

  And when they brought the stone, she held it tight against her belly, feeling its warmth from the sun.

  “Now he can feel his grandchild’s beating heart. He will feel that heartbeat through eternity. She will remember him, and always be fond of him.”

  The pōhaku was carefully passed from hand to hand so it would bear the imprint of each of this ‘ohana. It would be buried beside the child’s placenta.

  Her labor progressed. The chanters and midwife were attentive, but it was Rosie she reached out to. When spasms became intense, the midwife pressed down on her belly, and when they subsided she stepped back, and Rosie took her hand.

  Out on the lānai, elders argued over who, as oldest living member of this family, should assist in the birth of Ana’s child. Pua pointed at one-armed Ben.

  “You are ranking senior. It is your duty and your right.”

  Ben spoke with the modesty of a man who knew he would always be most beloved by the younger generations. For it was he who had delivered them, and loved them, and raised them to adulthood.

  He lowered his head, his cheeks were wet. “Such richness in old age! I, who don’t deserve it. I am a simple man. But, if allowed, I will teach the child prayers, legends, genealogy, family etiquette, and customs. I will teach her even traditions of land ownership, and how to talk to people in trouble. I have learned much in life.”

  Pua stood, hair floating round her like a shawl.

  “It is decided. This kupuna, and his mo‘opuna, will be one. You will never go too far from one another. You will always be a two-hour paddle home. Henceforth, this child will look to you as kumu. Source of all family knowledge.”

  AS LABOR PANGS INCREASED, ANA WAS MOVED FROM HER BED TO the living room. There she took a squatting position on the mats, and placed her arms round the midwife’s neck. The woman was so frail and old, she could not take the weight, and motioned Niki forward.

  “Think yourself into a sturdy tree! Let her cling to you for strength.”

  He faced his wife and locked her arms around his neck. Rosie moved behind her as her ko‘o kua, and sat, legs sprawled apart. With her arms encircling her, she pressed down on Ana’s stomach giving her support.

  The midwife saw the pain about to convulse her. ‘ “Ume i ka hanu!” Draw the breath!

  Colors and edges of thin
gs blurred beyond the natural. Ana gasped and bent forward. The chanters moved close, wailing softly in Hawaiian.

  “… Be patient, be patient. We are all here in watchful expectancy. Your husband who loves you is here, and so is your beloved Rosie who is holding you. And so your aunties and uncles who raised you, and your tender young cousins … And so your rightful mother is here, and your rightful father in the rock. They have gathered as the gods decreed … And so the gods are here, Kū and Hina, gods of medicine, and Hi‘iaka, Pele, and all the major and lesser gods. And everyone. And everything. Even the weather is here … The sun lying on her side, peeking through the window. The trade winds rippling the shades. All are in attendance just for you. You are not alone …”

  ———

  SCREAMING IN CHILDBIRTH WAS THOUGHT DISGRACEFUL, BUT NOW she screamed, she howled. Men looked away in order to be able to stand the moment. Some stepped outside, urgently scolding their boar-hounds. Trying to transfer Ana’s pain, the midwife called for a recipient.

  Gena pressed forward. “Give it to me. I will take her pain.”

  The old woman closed her eyes and prayed, but nothing happened. Another hour passed.

  As her labor began to reach its climax, the midwife instructed, “Push now. Push hard!”

  She cursed to restore her courage, pushing to exhaustion. Finally, they knelt her forward on her knees so she could rest. They put her head down on the mat and sponged her neck and shoulders. In the doorway, her mother prayed. Ana turned and glimpsed her mother’s face. Decades had passed without her knowing her, and maybe this was a mourning for those stillborn years. That’s what the child will be: a stillborn.

  She moaned and rocked back on her heels.

  Then someone moved to the midwife. “Give me the pain,” Anahola whispered. “Give it to me. Please.”

  Now she stood close, larger than life. Ana hung with her arms round Niki’s neck, watching as the midwife prayed. Her mother stood expectant, waiting for pain to strike her down, but nothing happened.