by Lisa Freeman
“You rest now, dear.” And then, as if Rox wasn’t in the room, she told me, “She’ll be asleep in a few minutes.” She placed her hand on my shoulder. “Try not to upset her.” She whisked off to see to another patient. I gave her the stink eye as she walked away.
Rox grabbed my arm. “You’ve got to keep an eye on Jerry,” she said. Her words tumbled out, swift and urgent.
“I haven’t let him out of my sight. He’s waiting outside.”
“No, no. Don’t let Diane see him. She’ll kill him. Really—she will.”
“It’s okay. He’s hidden away on a side street.”
Rox looked out her window, searching for Jerry all the way down 20th Street. It looked like her eyes were scanning as far as the new Promenade, past the Lawrence Welk towers, and on to the ocean, which seemed to be holding up the sky as the sun began to set. Finally, she came out of the daze and shook her head, turning away.
“I can’t feel my fingertips.” She clutched a barf bag to her chest like it was a teddy bear.
I tried to speak in my calmest voice. “Do you need to use that?” I asked. “Do you want me to get the nurse?”
“No!” She shifted around, trying to sit up again. I worried as she winced and rolled onto her side. “I need to tell you something.” She paused, then said, “What I did was not patriotic. What if another war breaks out? Who is going to fight in it?”
“What does any of this have to do with being patriotic?”
“Oh, Nani, you wouldn’t understand. You aren’t even American.”
I leaned closer to make sure I heard her correctly, clutching the cold metal railing of her bed. She had dismissed me in her meanest Rox way with her last bit of strength.
“What?”
“You’re not really American.”
“How do you figure? Hawaii is part of the United States,” I said, grinning. I really hoped she was joking.
But she continued more seriously than before, “It wasn’t a state when you were born, Nani. Think about it. You’re not really American. And this awful little nun named Helen Mary or Mary Helen something told me stuff. It’s making me worry.” I put my hand on her forehead. She was blazing hot with fever. She didn’t know what she was saying.
To cool her down, I fed her tiny, chipped pieces of ice with a small, pink plastic spoon. She licked her fingers like a kitten. I asked, “What did the nun say to you?”
She looked up at me and whispered, “That I’m going to go to hell.” The morphine was kicking in. She sounded really stoned.
“Well, you’re not.”
She gestured for more ice. “Yeah, you don’t know what I did,” she said as she slurped the spoon dry.
“Making a choice is your right. As an American.” I tried to tie in the patriotic theme somehow, but Rox was too far gone.
“Do you know what happens when a guy gets gonorrhea?” Her sultry blue eyes were fixed on mine, but they began to close. “His balls swell up, and it feels like his dick has been set on fire. But it’s not like that for a girl. Do you know …” She signaled for me to give her more ice. “Women have no signs. Zippo.”
Then she caught me off guard, pulled me in close, and whispered in my face with her stale breath, “I have gonorrhea. That’s why I got this infection. I’m sick, Nani.”
Now I knew I really would kill Jerry. I wasn’t going to leave that pleasure to Diane. I was going to incinerate him. “So Jerry got you pregnant and gave you the clap?”
“No.” Rox was trying to wave her hand in my face. She couldn’t keep her eyes open. “No,” she whispered again. “It was Scotty Ward—you know, that actor guy who surfs? But I love Jerry.”
I remembered that the nurse had said not to upset her, but I talked right into Rox’s face. “What do you mean?” When she didn’t answer, I said it a little louder. “What do you mean, Rox?”
I wasn’t going to let her fall asleep. She couldn’t—not yet. I tugged at her gown.
She opened her eyes. “A couple days after we went to Fiji, I met Scotty at my Chart House interview. He’s a waiter there. Well …” Her head drooped to one side, and then the other.
“Well, what?” I gave her another nudge so she couldn’t doze off. I was not going to let that morphine knock her out until she told me.
“Well, I figured I was pregnant already, so when one thing led to another, I thought I was safe.” She covered her face and shook a little. “Diane thinks it was Jerry.” Her voice trailed off as she said, “Nani, you have to know …” but she didn’t finish her sentence.
She never would finish that sentence, so I tried to end it for her. Nani, you have to know: I love you. I’m sorry. I beg your forgiveness. I will never lie to you again. You are the most important person in the world to me. I need you more than ever.
I felt an invisible force materialize between us—something that would wreak havoc for a very long time. I fell back into the chair, looking down at my arm. Then I ripped off the Band-Aid. A scab had formed over the burn spot that was supposed to be the symbol of our love. Looking at Rox passed out, I had a hard time mustering up any more sympathy for her. It was like she used Jerry and me to filter out all her dirty secrets so she stayed pure, while telling people I was a suicide case and Jerry was a total dirtbag.
I sat up suddenly. My thoughts were going too fast for me to keep up with them. I gripped my fingers together and felt a tightness in my chest.
Did I have it, too? Can girls give gonorrhea to girls?
But before she had trailed off, she had said “a couple days after Fiji.” So I was safe.
Wait a minute.
A couple days after Fiji? A couple. Days. After. Fiji?
I had to angle myself close to the wall because of the dizzying effect of so much adrenaline pumping through my head. It felt like all my love for Rox had burst, as if my heart was an egg that someone had cracked and emptied into a sizzling frying pan. A couple days after she slept with me, she had a—what? A fling? With some guy? She had two-timed me, which meant she had triple-timed Jerry.
I wanted to get away from Rox as fast as I could.
I grabbed the flowers and threw them in the trash just as my mom poked her head into the room, Diane following close behind. Jean looked back at Diane and said, “Oh, good. She’s asleep.” She turned to me. “I’m going to do a double shift and stay here with Diane. Will you be all right?”
She was so focused as she took me out into the hall, closed Rox’s door, and gave me a big hug. She pulled my hair back like she used to, then took my face in both her hands.
“Are you okay, honey?”
“Yeah.” I let her hug me again before I said, “Mom, that Sister Mary Helen said some bad things to Rox.”
She shook her head. I thought she was going to sympathize with me, but I should have known better. “It’s a Catholic hospital, Nani,” she said. “I don’t care how many laws are passed. What Rox did is against our faith.”
Our faith? Great, I thought. My mom was getting all religious on me, like she did when Dad died. What a joke. Don’t say anything, I told myself. I repeated it silently, again and again, Don’t say anything, don’t say anything, don’t say anything.
We walked to the elevator in silence. Then she stared me right in the eyes. “Look, I don’t want you to get in trouble. You and Nigel aren’t …”
“Oh, no. No. No.” I couldn’t deal with her. Just the fact that she asked made my head explode again. “No,” I said one more time, cutting her off before she could say another word.
“Good.” She was satisfied. “Don’t forget: men only want to marry a virgin, so always leave a little room for Jesus when you’re with a boy. Because if he feels the urge—”
“Mom!” It was like she was reading from some parenting book.
Luckily for me, a young candy striper distracted her. The girl was holding a steaming baked apple, the brown kind with the skin still on it. It looked pretty gross, sitting there in its own juices. My mom told the candy stripe
r to keep her hands tucked under the tray.
“After all,” she scolded indignantly, “it’s a patient’s food.”
Sister Mary Helen slithered by us and gave Mom an approving nod. Yeah, she was definitely going to get a good review. She might not have been the greatest mom, but as far as I could see, she was an amazing nurse.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Spam
When I hopped in the van, I told Jerry almost nothing. The truth is, for the very first time, I felt sorry for him. We’d both been fooled by Rox.
He was such a wreck after the hospital, the least I could do was cook him some dinner. I sat him at the kitchen table while I cooked. To cheer him up, I decided to continue his lessons on Hawaii. First, I reminded him that it was the fiftieth state. Then I gave him a little quiz: “How many islands are in Hawaii?”
He shrugged his shoulders. I couldn’t believe he didn’t know even the most basic information, so I wrote down the names of the islands in their traditional spellings, hoping that would give him a bit of an edge when it came to becoming a local. But at home there were so many different spellings for each island, I just had to give it my best guess. He wouldn’t know the difference.
“First there’s Hawai’i, the big island. Then comes Maui, which was named after a real demigod—kind of like Hercules. Story goes: Maui dragged all the islands out of the sea. Anyway, off of Maui is Lana’i, the pineapple island. Across from that is Moloka’i the friendly island. Then my home, Oahu. Kauai is the garden island, and Ni’ihau is the forbidden island. Don’t ever go there. There’s also a couple of tiny islands off of Maui. One of them is Kaho’olawe, but people from the mainland don’t count it as an island, which is lame.”
I decided I was going to splurge on him, so I cut up the last bit of butter we had in the house. As I made some delicious Spam and grilled cheese on Wonder Bread, I could feel Jerry come up behind me. He was standing too close and caught me off guard when he pushed my bangs away from my face with just his fingertips. I quickly grabbed a bowl and moved away.
I made a tasty mixture of mayonnaise and soy sauce to dunk our sandwiches in. When I pointed Jerry back to his chair and sat the food down in from of him, he gobbled it up and then asked, “Is Spam ham?”
“Sort of. It’s part ham. Part pork shoulder. And it has lots of salt and sugar mixed in. You can cook it just about any way you want.” I showed him my dad’s favorite Spam recipes, which my mom still kept on index cards in a tin box. I was surprised when a black-and-white photo fell onto the floor. Jerry picked it up.
“That’s my dad. It’s from one of our hikes to the Akaka Falls.” I remembered that day so well. Dad had told me about the Menehune, little people who lived in the hills and built temples and roads that still exist. I wish he had told me more. In the picture, bright sunlight was angling across his face, and his eyes were closed. But, like always, he was smiling.
“Wow,” Jerry said. “He was a big guy. Did anyone ever tell you he looked like Duke Kahanamoku?”
When I didn’t say anything, Jerry asked, “Are you upset? You’re fiddling with your hair. I noticed you do that when you’re bummed out.”
I was surprised when he put his arm around me. I wanted to curl into him instead of pulling away. He felt too good. Jerry Richmond was like a sunbeam I didn’t want to land on me.
I painted a blank expression across my face; it was like a curtain blocking me from the world. The last thing I wanted to be with Jerry was romantic. “Spam goes great in lasagna,” I told him in my spunkiest voice. “It’s also good with panko.” I wriggled out of his arms to show him the box of Japanese breadcrumbs, so he’d know exactly what it was. Then I carefully put my dad’s photo back into the recipe box.
“I guess you don’t want to talk about it,” Jerry said. He stood up and went into the other room. I heard him turn on the TV, then yell, “Where did Spam come from?”
“In World War II, the food ran out on Oahu. The army turned us onto it.”
Then we ran out of things to say, and it got quiet except for the show Jerry was blasting. I kept drying the same dish, just so I wouldn’t have to go sit down with him. It was a relief when the phone rang.
“Your phone goes off nonstop,” Jerry said.
“It’s probably my mom,” I said, running down the hall to the phone table. Before I even choked out a hello, Rox yelled, “Where’s Jerry?” She sounded stoned and crazy.
“In my living room. I have him watching TV.”
“Well, make sure he goes straight home.”
Then she hung up on me. The nerve!
I went back into the living room. Jerry asked, “What did your mom say? Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s great,” I told him. “Rox is doing much better.”
But as he moved toward me, I felt a tickle down my spine. An alarm went off in my head when he hugged me and said, “Thank you—I mean, mahalo—for everything. You’re really sweet, Nani.” And even though it was a friendly hug, the warning whistle went off louder. Hugging Jerry Richmond was like playing with fire.
Quickly I asked, “Can we talk tomorrow? I’m kind of tired.”
“Oh, yeah, for sure, for sure,” he said, grabbing his stuff and letting himself out the back door.
I watched him drive away. My thoughts went to the sky. I needed the moon. Something bigger than being brown. Bigger than Rox, America, and nuns. I imagined that I could see Oahu out in the ocean, instead of the faint lights from Catalina. I didn’t belong here, and I would have risked shark-infested waters to swim home.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Hit and Run
I was getting home later and later from the beach each day. What was the point of being home, anyway? Rox wasn’t calling, and I wasn’t about to call her. The sun was almost down when I got home one evening and found Joyce leaving a small saucepan at the back door.
“Hi,” she said. “In case you’re hungry.”
“You want to come in?”
“For a minute.”
Once again, I was impressed with what Joyce was wearing. She had on a cardigan and plaid skirt. Even at the end of the day, she still looked fresh and groomed.
“How are things going?” she asked.
I tried to keep a nonchalant look on my face, but, like I said, that Joyce is a sharp one. I could tell she could see through me. “I haven’t talked to my best friend in a week. We’re not getting along. At all.”
“Is this the one who had an abortion?”
“Yeah.” I wasn’t going to BS with Joyce. She knew the deal. “Rox said some really …” I was trying to find the word for it. “Lousy things to me when she was in the hospital.”
“Was Rox feeling all right?”
“No. She was sick as a dog.”
“Do you think that was why she said it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you give her one more chance? I mean, if she’s your best friend.”
I liked the way Joyce asked me questions to help me figure things out. I wasn’t going to say yes, and I wasn’t going to say no, so I just said, “I’ll think about it.”
After I had a big bowl of the clam chowder Joyce had left, I thought more about what she had said and decided she was right. I shouldn’t throw away Fiji—at least not yet. I put on something cute, slipped a Fireball in my mouth, and put the pot, still holding what was left of the soup, into my bike basket. Then I rode up San Vicente to her house. With each pump of the pedals, I felt better. Joyce was probably right. This was one big mix-up. I was worrying about nothing.
And sure enough, when I looked in the front window of her house, I fell in love with Rox all over again. She didn’t know I was watching her walk through the living room, turning the lights off as she went. She was wearing pink, her feel-good color, and playing with the necklace the SOS gave her.
I snuck around to the back of the house with the pot of soup, making sure none of it spilled. Her room was dimly lit, and the ruffled canopy over her bed ma
tched the butterfly wallpaper. I loved that bed. I knocked on the sliding glass door with my foot.
The second she opened it, I said, “Are you going to kiss me, or what?”
Rox shoved me back into the patio. “Hey, watch it!” I said. Luckily, I didn’t spill a drop of soup because my hot pads were firmly on both hands. She shushed me, so I said quietly, “You look good.” She really did. And she was wearing her special, sexy Chanel perfume, so I joked, “Let’s have a hit-and-run.”
“Did I invite you over? What are you doing here?”
That’s also when the bathroom door opened. A guy came out, and a shock wave went right through me. Rox hissed under her breath, “Scotty and I are making up.”
“You’re together?”
“Almost.”
The porch light turned on and Scotty came to the door. Rox said curtly, “Scotty, this is Nani. She’s one of my little friends from Pali.”
He looked at me and said, “How’s it going, sweetheart?” Like I was five or something. Before I could say another word, Rox had me halfway down the driveway.
“Be right back!” she called to Scotty.
Because I was still holding the soup, I couldn’t fight off her tight grip on my forearm. I must have looked like an idiot. My hot pads were slipping, and I had to use my knee to push up the pot before it fell and dumped soup all over me.
I forced the soup pot into the bike basket and whirled on Rox. “Are you kidding me? Really?” I got right into Rox’s face.
“Keep your voice down.”
“What about Jerry?” And then I thought, Screw Jerry. “What about me? What about us? We made a pact!” I held up my arm and showed her the scar. Rox had a blasé look on her face. It was clear, but I said it anyway, “You don’t care, do you?”
“Not really.”
She started to freeze me out and shut down. I told her, “Don’t you treat me like that. How can you be with a guy when you’re a lesbian?”
“I am not a lesbian. You might be one, but I’m not.”