Belleau, Heidi & Vane, Violetta_Hawaiian Gothic

by Heidi Belleau

  “My ‘aumakua live in the cloud-land over the ocean. I can go home, if I’m free.”

  Yes. He’d find his way outside. Look up at the sky for a while. And wait. He was too tired to run any farther. When they came for him, he’d go.

  He’d done the right thing. It felt like the first time in his life he could say that, and he hoped that thought would be enough to sustain him after today, after this horrible numbness inevitably washed away, leaving him to old guilt and new nightmares. He found the strength to return to the elevator and hit the Down arrow again. Urgent but calm. Just like the nurses, doing their grim work. He’d go down to the main floor and ask for directions to the courtyard.

  The elevator dinged, and Ori snapped to attention as if he were at drill. At ease, Corporal. He steeled himself to walk into it stiff and straight, with no cringe of guilt.

  But then the door opened to Saul Kanazawa’s face, and it all fell apart.

  * * * *

  All this time, Saul Kanazawa had been living in a rusty old beater of a car, drifting between Nanakuli and Honolulu along with the quiet mass of other nomads that made Oahu their home, men and women and families alike. He’d been with Kalani and Ori all their lives.

  Now, he was parked about ten blocks from the hospital. The long walk to his car had been…surreal, to say the least. Saul was thinner than the photo, and much grayer, although he still wore his hair long. They were the same height, Saul’s once-taller frame shrunken from hard living and bad sleeping. Frown lines carved his face, making him look like he wasn’t even capable of smiling. Ori wondered if he was looking into his own future.

  “I thought you were gonna kill me,” said Saul. “When that elevator door opened. You had crazy eyes.” He said it without a trace of humor or fear, in a voice that seemed rusty from disuse. He opened the doors and started rearranging blankets and crates and threadbare laundry bags to make room for them to sit.

  “I thought so too,” Ori said, as emotionless as Saul. “Actually, I’m still not so sure.”

  That wasn’t true. He’d killed out of duty, and for self-protection, now for mercy, but he knew he wouldn’t cross that line into revenge. He climbed into the passenger-side seat and waited while Saul walked around the nose of the car and got in on the driver’s side, shutting the door behind him. Ori left the door on his side hanging wide open, blocking the sidewalk. An escape route.

  Once he’d gotten settled in his own sagging seat, Saul turned to Ori with an intense stare. “I made a mistake. I thought I could pay for it. Set it right. That’s the only reason I’m still alive today. Been waiting. Waiting so long. And now I don’t have to wait anymore, and neither do you. We drink this. I say the chant and send you after him.” He gestured to a plastic vodka bottle filled with murky brown liquid. “It’s through the eyes. Your soul leaves through the corner of the—”

  “You did this to him. You.” If there was enough space for it, he’d have shoved Saul, or punched him, or something, but instead he just sat there like a useless idiot, balled hands banging his own thighs.

  “Yes. I did. And I’ve been—what would you have done? I thought I could save her from Jonathan.” “I don’t know! Not killed her and maimed her son, just for a start!” Ori took a deep, shuddering breath. No, you’d have just sat back and watched it all happen and decided you were powerless to stop it. Then you’d have joined the army. “Wait, what do you mean, save her from Jonathan? I thought—Keola—I thought you were getting revenge. On both of them, Jonathan and Malia.”

  Saul’s face fell, his mouth fitting perfectly into the well-worn frown lines. “It sure did look like that, didn’t it?” He sighed. “But you got me all wrong, kid, not that I blame you. If Jonathan had just done what he did and left Malia alone, I would of let the fucker go. It would of hurt, but I would of done it. Cut my losses. Quit while I was ahead. Keola was already dead, but Malia and I… We could of taken Kalani and picked up the pieces.”

  “I don’t understand. Malia—Keola—but Andrea said—” He couldn’t read Saul’s expression, not at all. “Andrea was a good friend to Malia, but the three of us—Keola, Malia, and I—we had a lot of secrets. Even from her. But believe me. I loved Malia, and I could of loved Kalani and…” He heaved a tremulous sigh. “And now I got nothing.”

  Just like me.

  Saul looked to him, desperation and pleading in his eyes. “Nothing but a bottle of ‘awa, a bit of old magic I barely know how to use, and a hope that you’re gonna be the one who’s brave and strong enough to fix what’s still left to fix.”

  “Tell me what to do,” Ori said. He knew it was dangerous, that it could still be a trick, but it didn’t fucking matter. What he had to gain was worth a million of what he had to lose. “Don’t think this means I fucking forgive you, or I trust your word, but… Tell me what to do.”

  He took Saul’s bottle, tipped it back, and drank. Even though he knew the ‘awa would be bitter and nauseating, he still almost vomited it right back up the second it hit his stomach. He lurched forward, ignoring Saul’s outstretched hand and instead supporting himself with an elbow against the grimy dashboard. Then he took another swig.

  Saul began chanting in Hawaiian. Ori hoped he’d gotten better at this in the twenty-three years since the first disastrous curse. Saul, who’d tried and failed so very badly. What kind of young man had he been?

  His head was getting heavy. It couldn’t just be the ‘awa. He’d drunk it before, on a dare from Kalani, and it was mild stuff, soporific, not—

  “Sit back and close your eyes,” Saul told him. In English. At least, Ori thought it was English. Saul’s face blurred around the edges, sun wrinkles at the corner of his eyes branching into fractal patterns.

  But Ori couldn’t close his eyes. Couldn’t just sit back. Something was wrong. Something— “I didn’t want to kill him. Oh Jesus. How do I find him? The sky, he said. His ‘aumakua. I don’t understand.” The windshield was dusty and pockmarked. Through it, the side of a warehouse painted with monochrome industrial logos. No clouds. Hawaiian was a beautiful language even in Saul’s harsh voice: less lilting than Tagalog, more sonorous and weighty.

  “You’ll understand. You’ll find him faster than I ever could. He’s not ready for the journey he wants to take.”

  “I’m still here.”

  “Gonna send you.” Saul leaned over him with a knife. A small chef’s knife, polite and polished, with Japanese script on the ebony hilt. It flashed, bright and deadly. Such a tiny, innocuous little thing, to kill him after he’d faced down grenades and machine gun fire.

  I don’t want to die. Saul’s brow furrowed. No pity. “You don’t have long, so move quick.” The blade bit into Ori’s wrist.

  Ori pushed his arm out of the open door so that he wouldn’t bleed all over a man’s only home. That seemed important, for some reason. The thick red stuff streamed a few inches in toward his elbow, then fell to the asphalt. A small pool formed. Flecks bobbed on the dark surface, swirling in strange pretty patterns. He smiled down at them, imagining them swimming through his body and dancing in his eyes.

  “God what the hell am I—I could stop this. It’s not too late. You haven’t lost that much yet. You still—”

  Ori waved him off with his good arm, the movement erratic, drunken, and yet oddly slow, going frame by frame. “No. No.”

  Kalani. I’m coming.

  * * * *

  1988 Malia left Jonathan the day after her twenty-second birthday. He’d drunk too much at her party and punched her in the face and the next morning she woke up and decided that she wasn’t going to give him another year of her life.

  Jonathan didn’t like her having her own friends, but a couple of people from high school still reached out to her and asked about her and didn’t walk past her in the street with their eyes averted like she’d bring them bad luck. Andrea was the obvious choice, nice as she was, but Malia couldn’t stand the thought of getting her caught up in the whole mess with Jonathan—and anyway, And
rea lived in a studio apartment and had a roommate already. There was one person too big for Jonathan to beat down: her ex, Keola. She’d heard he was living on the Hamakua coast with his best friend, Saul, in a big old house with rooms to spare.

  So she packed up everything she owned, every last thing, into two big duffel bags, stole Jonathan’s jar of coins from the top of the fridge, and took a cab to Keola’s. She just had to hope he wouldn’t close the door in her face.

  Keola hadn’t seen Malia since graduation, but when she showed up on his doorstep, every old feeling he had for her flared up into new life. The fact that she’d come with an ugly black eye sealed the deal. He couldn’t send her away.

  The rooms of the old house weren’t all livable. He and Saul had spent the last two months tearing down rain-rotten wood, putting up new beams, hammering, cleaning. The only one that was really in any decent shape was the one with their shared queensize bed, but he strung Malia up a hammock in a room that had no leaks, at least, even if wasn’t too pretty. He promised to buy her a mattress with his next paycheck, and if she wanted, he could take her down to the hardware store and pick out a color for him and Saul to paint the walls.

  Him and Saul. He didn’t understand how it had happened in the first place. They’d been so close all their lives, then one day friendship had turned to something else and they hadn’t gone back. And he didn’t want to go back either. That first night after Malia’s arrival, he fucked Saul nice and slow and long to remind him that Malia or no Malia, Saul was the one he wanted and the one he’d chosen.

  Saul knew that the sex that night was supposed to make some kind of point, but he couldn’t help but think that Keola was just overcompensating for something. Saul was so desperate, though, he’d take any scraps Keola gave him. He savored every touch and let himself echo every one of Keola’s moans, hoping in some petty part of him that the thin walls would carry them to Malia.

  He’d never expected this to last. Nothing lasted in his life. Not his family—Keola’s family had cared for him more than his own blood ever had. Keola was a whole man, strong and brave and as perfect as a picture, and Saul didn’t know whether he loved him or wanted to be him although it was probably a little of both. Keola deserved better than some weird hidden gay thing in a broken-down house overlooking a sheer cliff like the next earthquake would send it sliding down into the waves.

  He should be glad that Malia was here. Glad for the smile on Keola’s face when he said her name. Glad for Malia too that she’d gotten out of a bad place and was safe now. Saul still couldn’t look her in the eyes. The bruise hurt too much to look at, maybe, and he felt ashamed for that, and angry too. Angry at the man who’d painted it on her. Angry at himself for feeling insecure about her place in their home when she didn’t even have anywhere else to go.

  Malia slept for nearly two days straight. It was so easy, not having to be anything for anyone. She woke full of the same nervous energy as she always had, but with no tight-wound anxiety to spend it on, she burned it off by exploring the land, taking the rough winding trail to the foot of the cliff where a blade-thin waterfall fountained fifty feet down into the ocean.

  Learning to live for herself seemed an impossibly far-off goal. Still, here in this magic place beyond his reach, she could begin.

  When Keola and Saul came home that night, she told them she was hopeless with a hammer, but she’d worked in a nursery for many years. She’d clear the massively overgrown yard and plant ti leaf all along the dirt path to the house, to prevent erosion and create beauty. Let me not be a beggar here, she didn’t add. As friendly as they’d been, she still felt like she didn’t belong. She hadn’t exactly expected to start up with Keola where they’d left off in high school, but she hadn’t expected for things to be quite this changed either. She tried to stay out of their way, carving a place for herself in their home that would make her useful and unobtrusive, if not always entirely welcome.

  Keola saw her every morning swinging a machete in low, graceful arcs, digging gloved fingers into the rich red soil, methodically bringing order out of chaos. The bruise faded and vanished, but she still didn’t talk much, and looked at the ground more than seemed normal, even for a gardener. He couldn’t understand how she could let herself be hurt so badly. She was so beautiful and strong. It was a puzzle, and he couldn’t even fit the very first piece of it.

  But he remembered how the two of them used to fit together. The house only had one working bathroom, and he’d hear the old pipes groan when she showered off the day’s sticky sweat, and he’d imagine her sliding the soap— the same plain white bar that he and Saul shared—over every curve of her body until she was pure, brown skin gleaming with water, inviting him to kiss her, touch her, take her up against the wall, kneel between her legs…

  Saul saw the way they looked at each other. And maybe he should be fighting for whatever he had with Keola, but he didn’t want to fight. He’d spent enough of his life fighting. His father. His grandfather. Himself. He told Keola it was a good idea not to share the same bed anymore, in case Malia found out. Keola tried to argue, but it was halfhearted, and Saul moved into a cot in the living room. Not that he needed it. He never seemed to sleep anymore.

  One night while he lay awake staring at the living room ceiling, Malia came to him, shaking with some powerful, inarticulate emotion. Keola didn’t understand, she said, why she wouldn’t press charges. She begged Saul to make him stop bringing it up. Having her weakness rubbed in her face by the man she loved made living here seem impossible. Did Saul understand?

  He told her no, she wasn’t weak, and yes, he understood. And it was like talking to himself in a mirror. Falling into his own eyes. It was easy, after that, to welcome her into his tiny bed and gather her close, hold her until the shaking subsided—hold her like he needed to be held too.

  Malia knew, especially after Saul moved out into the living room, that her presence in the house was causing discord. But she didn’t know how to fix it, and she was too afraid to leave. She didn’t want to compete with Saul for Keola’s attention—she wasn’t that kind of person, for one, and for two she’d grown to love Saul just as much as she’d ever loved Keola, especially now that he’d become her sole ally when it came to Jonathan and her decision not to press charges.

  She’d thought the two of them were close like brothers, at first, and they even looked the part—handsome sons of the same island. The truth came to her in hushed whispers and flashing eyes and doors closed too softly or too loudly late at night. It was supposed to be a sin, but she’d never understood why. They seemed like a perfectly normal couple, other than the secretiveness: doing the dishes side by side, pouring each other coffee, getting into petty arguments over whose turn it was to pick the TV channel. What Saul and Keola had was the closest thing to normal she’d ever experienced. She imagined them living long lives together. Days, months, years, until they were the same as any old married couple.

  She wanted Keola and Saul to be happy. Happy together. Something had to give. Keola watched the physical structure of the house heal around them until it was nearly as whole as its postwar glory years. The neat lines of ti plants welcomed him home every day, glints of light flaming on their glossy swordlike leaves, and flowering maile vines trailed along the patio. But inside the house—the home they’d built— everything was falling apart. He wanted to make it right, and he didn’t know how.

  They stopped eating together. Saul talked about selling his share of the house to Keola on installment and leaving for Honolulu. Malia’s duffel bags began to fill up again, and she begged him not to buy her a mattress. Neither of them realized that, together, they doomed him to staying here alone. His whole world was quietly, politely ending.

  One late night when the silence lay thick and bitter as volcanic smoke, he lashed out…at himself. What about him was driving them away, he demanded to know, and they shrank back from him and wouldn’t look each other in the eye. Keola knew his own measure. He was a strong labo
rer, a fine woodworker, a skilled fisherman, a good friend and better lover. He’d fight the world to make both of them happy, if they stayed in this house. But it wasn’t the world that stood in the way, not of this.

  Saul’s shame at how he’d hurt Keola nearly swallowed him whole. It vanished a second later when he realized how easy it would be to make things right again. Prove to Keola he still wanted him—Goddid he still want him. He just didn’t want him enough to see Malia hurt again. Alone again. Because Saul loved her, he realized. Loved her enough to give up his only happiness to see her safe and well.

  Malia had never considered sharing Keola; out of respect for Saul she’d jumped directly to giving him up. That was what a good person did, wasn’t it? Gave and gave and gave and never took? She hadn’t dared to dream there might be an alternative, one where all three of them could be happy, where nobody had to give up anything and nobody had to be alone.

  Keola took one step closer to Malia, and she raised her arms toward him like a flower to the sun, her eyes heavy-lidded and hungry. He reeled her in. When they kissed, he made sure that Saul could see everything. He’d bare himself. No shame, no secrets; it wasn’t an affair. Every pleasure shared.

  Saul couldn’t help the pang of jealousy at the sight, but the pain flipped into a dizzying happiness, then into the ache of arousal. The feelings ran deep and changeable like the ocean, cresting to an unimaginable height when he and Malia embraced at Keola’s gentle urging. Malia was strong in his arms, blossoming, so much more than the unsure woman who’d crawled into his cot in the middle of the night. Her body enfolded him, her sweet soft mouth touching his, fleeting at first and then luxuriously slow. When he felt Keola reach around him from behind, he knew they’d found their answer.

  Malia had a moment of sheer terror when they were at last together on the bed. She’d never felt so overcome before, both by their desire and her own. She waited it out; meanwhile, they showed her their lovemaking, touching each other in places she’d never expected men would like. She could be happy watching—their skin gleaming with sweat, their shifting muscles and arching, twisting bodies, their long dark hair— but soon they gathered her in, nestling her between them. Two mouths and four hands worshipped her body and set the blood singing in her veins until the fever burned too hot and she started to beg and then demand more.