Song of the Exile

by Kiana Davenport

  He had gained weight. He was swimming again, his muscles acquiring density. Some nights he felt so good, he walked all the way home to Kalihi, then slept straight through till afternoon. One day in August when he woke, the neighborhood was still. No manapua man singing up the lane. No tofu man. His mother and father sitting quiet, staring at their hands. He went back to sleep. In early evening he saw neighbors in the lane, whole families dressed in white, carrying paper lanterns in procession. Sometimes they paused, as if allowing the shadow of someone absent to precede them.

  “Mama? Papa?” He looked from one to the other.

  They shook their heads.

  Baby Jonah ran in from the lane. “Uncle Papa! Everybody whispering, ‘Kulikuli. Kulikuli.’ Be quiet! I say, ‘Fo’ why kulikuli?’ Dey say ‘hir-osh-i-ma.’ What dat word mean?”

  Storefronts darkened. Traffic stilled. Somewhere in small coves, on hidden beaches, families in white robes floated paper lanterns out to sea. Ribbons of softly glowing lights floated on the tide, returning spirits of the dead to the Buddhist paradise.

  Days later, Japanese neighbors who worked the cane fields—coming home smoky and singed, sticking together like taffy—rowed sixty yards off the north shore to a tiny isle, Mokoli‘i. There they knelt on pillows, taking their lives. Hearing the story, Keo tried to imagine the delicate old couple embracing, saying their goodbyes. Then the sharp point of a blade pressed against each belly.

  Finally, the sirens. The echoing BONNNG of peace bells. For years, folks would link the atom bomb to the end of war, surrender. They would say that’s what it took.

  RABAUL

  NEW BRITAIN, 1945

  She scratches her legs, gathering fossils, whole colonies of cells. She studies her scrawny arms, as if they are microbes of huge proportions. She inhales. And exhales. She concentrates on grains of rice, each grain a textured world. She holds each world in her mouth until it is indistinguishable from saliva.

  She imagines raw savannahs, rice paddies, humans with bent backs plowing fields. Imagines arabesqued horns of languid oxen trampling harvested sheaves. She imagines each grain freed from straw and chaff and dust, leaving its “rice spirit” in the soil. She weighs almost nothing, she can hardly lift her bones.

  Fleeing from Allied ground forces who have taken the west coast of the island, Japanese troops arrive at Rabaul dying from starvation, typhoid, gangrene, many minus an arm, a leg. Those sane enough to talk tell girls the Allies will skin them alive, melt down their body fats for aircraft and bomb lubrication.

  Sunny listens, feeling nothing, wondering, “When will I feel outrage? When will I scream this is all I can bear?”

  She no longer sleeps. She stands outside herself and watches. Perhaps she is curious—how will it end? Water is now so precious, hands and faces are caked with mud. Bathing is a memory.

  One night she is summoned to Matsuharu’s quarters.

  “What now?” she asks, so weak her words drag in the groove of her thoughts.

  He studies her, his eyes deranged.

  “We are going underground. We will survive in our fortress until instructions from our emperor. We will fight the Allies to the death!”

  She thinks he means the troops are going underground. She thinks he means the time has come for her to die. She touches her neck, picturing the graceful arc of his sword in flight.

  “Who is going underground?” she asks.

  “You. Me. Now.”

  HO ‘OKAUMAHA

  To Cause Deep Sorrow

  HONOLULU, 1945–46

  WITH MAGICAL ABRUPTNESS, THE LANE CAME TO LIFE AGAIN. Folks strolled arm in arm, greeting the poi man, the tofu man. They sat up late with lights ablaze, celebrating pau blackout. Still later, others haunted the lane, war vets with the tired sway of somnambulists, squatting furtively in bushes, aiming imaginary rifles at people-shaped laundry flapping on lines.

  Even parents of dead boys came to life, saving their grief for darkened bedrooms. At the National Memorial Cemetery up in Punchbowl Crater, boys were buried as they had fallen in battle, regardless of rank or race. Some days Keo stood over the memorial plaque to Jonah, and those of friends killed in Belgium, Normandy, a sniper the day the Allies took Berlin.

  He thought of Hawai‘ian boys with dark, brooding faces that were also beautiful. He remembered their husky, seaworthy bodies, and skin that was brown but with golden undertones. He remembered how, surfing in moonlight, the goldenness came out, as if the glare of sunlight made it dark. Now four of his friends were gone. Two bruisers from Farrington High, and two of the beachboys from the Royal.

  They were part of the forty percent of fighting soldiers from Hawai‘i—Chinese, Portuguese, Filipino, Koreans, Puerto Ricans, even Samoans and haole—that no one had cheered when they came home, that no one celebrated. No waving banners, no parades at ‘Iolani Palace like the “Welcome Home 442nd” celebration for fierce-fighting Japanese-American local boys who had banded as a regiment.

  He came to Punchbowl regularly to “talk story” with the unacclaimed, to honor them, sometimes clearing weeds away from their markers. One day, sitting near Jonah’s plaque, he saw in the distance what looked like a child being choked by a giant snake, the thing twisting and thrashing in his arms. He blinked, and looked again: a dwarf wrestling a long hose.

  “Oogh?”

  Recognition like a whiff of ammonia firing his nostrils, the sharp insistence of the past. Oogh telling his future on a freighter, playing him Puccini in New Orleans. Oogh feeding him nightingale broth in Shanghai. Keo ran forward, lifting and spinning him.

  “Hula Man. You make me plenny tired, coming here so often. . . .”

  “What? How long have you worked here?”

  “Three, four months now.”

  Keo sat down on the grass, amazed. “But, why a cemetery?”

  “Dead folks plenny tactful. Dey no stare.”

  Oogh sat down beside him, wiping the brow of his massive head, his argot still a blend of English, French, and Pidgin.

  “I worked Halekulani several months. Très posh hotel, no? They put me in uniform, paging folks, like that Philip Morris guy. Then these tourists try pick me up! ‘Oh, so cute. Is he fo’ real?’ Dis big Texan, try buy me. BUY ME. Wan’ take me home fo’ souvenir.”

  Keo bit his lip, trying not to laugh.

  “OK. Maybe funny, dat. But next time he try pick me up, what I do, I head-butt him real hard in da balls. Big Texan moaning on his knees. Now he suing Halekulani. No mo’ ‘Call for Philip Morrrrrrrisssss!’ ”

  They lay laughing on the grass amongst the dead boys.

  Then Keo scolded him. “I searched for you for months when I got back.”

  “Hula Man. I always turn up. Guarantee.”

  “But, where you living now?”

  “With kanaka papa. Over Wai‘anae way. Whatta guy, whatta guy! No can read, or write, but can spearfish, surf, weave fishnet, plant taro like one pro. Aku every day fo’ lunch.”

  Keo moved closer. “You don’t miss your mama in Shanghai?”

  His voice and posture changed. “Sometimes.”

  He lit a cigarette, blowing a series of perfect, progressively smaller smoke rings that snuggled inside each other like sets of Chinese boxes.

  “Maybe I’ll always be torn. Something of an exile. Much like you.”

  “Me? I’m back where I belong.”

  “No, Hula Man. You’ll never quite belong. That’s why I look out for you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Oogh shook his head. “Always explanations. Exile is not just physical. It’s deep inside you. The truth—didn’t you feel little bit of exile even with your sweetheart?”

  Keo looked down. “I don’t remember.”

  “On your happiest day in Paris, weren’t you always little bit alone?”

  “I thought that was fear that I was mediocre. That’s still my nightmare.”

  Oogh jumped to his feet, lapsing into Pidgin.

  “ ’Ey! What wrong
with mediocre? It mean ordinary, what most folks are. Ordinariness best kine quality. Look how mediocre man live—quiet, lazy, no bother others. T’ink ’bout digestion, making love, lying on beach. What better dan dat? Mediocre man understand life short, live while can. All dat other stuff—genius, originality, work, work, work—fo’ da birds! Breed ugliness! Everybody come suspicious, competitive. ‘Who da best? Who da best?’ Who care who da best?”

  “Dew Baptiste always said if it’s mediocre, it isn’t jazz.”

  Oogh dropped his large head to his chest, staring at his bandy legs. “Ho, man. How I pray fo’ be mediocre. Keo, you no understand real nightmares.”

  Keo gazed at this little man who seemed to have witnessed much of his life, to have influenced it. He felt great and deep affection.

  “Why? Do you have nightmares? What are yours?”

  Oogh looked away. “To wake up on a leash, or in a cage. Somebody’s souvenir.”

  PEACE BROUGHT AN END TO HOARDING. LEILANI STOPPED SQUIRRELING away crates of Spam and huge bags of rice in bedroom closets. When she could bear to, she packed Jonah’s things away until the room was empty but for Baby Jonah’s bed.

  Now bolts of fabric took up residence against the walls. Cutting table. Dressmaker’s dummy. The child fell asleep to the gasp and snip of scissors, pinking shears. Sometimes while she slept, Malia lifted her, pressing a pattern to her back, winding material round her limbs. For years, she would remember being swaddled in fabric while she lolled half conscious. She would remember finding her little body chalked, as if she were a target, Malia’s face looming large, mouth dripping cobwebs of needles and thread. She would remember rows of little dresses in her closet, how they hung like perfect children with their tongues cut out.

  One day Malia handed Pono a wad of bills, tying the Singer to a wagon, trundling it five lanes over.

  “Time you owned it,” Pono said. “I’m pau sewing. Starting life anew.”

  She stood epic in the green dress Malia had designed. Oceans and currents of her long black hair upswept. She wore smart toe-pinch high heels that gave her a terrible, majestic height. Nothing about her lingered, everything rushed the light—full lips luminous, eyes dense as bullets. Cheeks so flushed and prominent she looked feverish, a woman prepared to beat back life. A woman who would outlive her daughters.

  Malia stared up at her. “My God, I hope this man deserves you.”

  For the first time in their wary friendship, Pono let her guard down. “He is the reason I exist.”

  Years later, Malia would learn Pono’s destination that day after the war, when peace had been declared. She had gone to fetch a man hidden away for most of his life, a victim of ma‘i pk. War had brought the miracle of sulfa drugs, and somehow Pono thought the drugs would cure him, that she could bring him home. What she found was a man whose flesh had horribly outpaced the medication. Damage could not be undone.

  THROUGH THE WAR, KRASH’S LETTERS HAD BEEN BRIEF. BASIC training in boot camp where they thought he was Mexican, then vague, tissue-thin letters from overseas. Then brief letters from a hospital where he had recovered. He referred to his missing lung and ribs just once, as if he had misplaced them and they would turn up again. Yet each rib, when she received them, had been so thoughtfully inscribed—KRASH KAPAKAHI in old-fashioned script—so carefully padded and packaged. Malia still took them nightly to her bed, stroking them like an archer with miniature bows, her silent cries the arrows.

  Finally, he was coming home. His letters grew even shorter, no hint of joy, anticipation. As if he had been wounded in his hand, and writing letters was mere exercise, a way to keep intact the nerve ends in his fingers. She held his last letter to her chest, watching it tremble.

  “I don’t expect things,” she lied. “We never had that much in common.”

  “He going be different,” Leilani said. “Dey all coming back different.”

  Soft-spoken boys had come home full-throated men. And there was something in the eyes, as if they’d stood knee-deep in fire. Even young boys with sweetheart faces. Even the toughest “Go-For-Brokers”—the 442nd Regiment of Japanese-Americans who had earned ten thousand Purple Hearts, four thousand Bronze Stars, six hundred Silver Stars. Even the ones who never saw combat. All came back different.

  Malia was there the day his troopship docked, massive as a city block. Men, thousands, leaned at its rails while troupes danced hula dockside. A military band played; stretchers were carried off to ambulances. Then, men ambled down gangplanks. Strangers in khaki. Leaner, quieter.

  Krash’s family enfolded him. Then Keo grabbed him, weeping and not caring. Malia stood paralyzed, so close she smelled his aftershave. She had forgotten his impact, how his nearness made her tongue feel thick and raw. She had forgotten his bronze skin was rough, slightly pitted in the cheeks, but his features were still handsome. He was immensely graceful, even standing still. Modestly she shook his hand.

  Days later, at a l‘au honoring returning boys, they strolled the beach together. Up close, she saw he was the same, but different. Still muscular, but in a leaner way, face thinner, even his lips less full. There were deep creases in his forehead. He had a certain edge now, like someone looking for a showdown, yet his voice beside her was so soft, she could hardly bear it.

  “I prayed for you.” She kept her head down. “Thank God you’re home.”

  “It seems . . . different now,” he said.

  “Different?”

  “People chatter a lot.”

  “Your families don’t know how to thank you for surviving. They just need to talk. That’s all.”

  She wanted to mention his ribs, how carefully she had kept them. But that would make them too important.

  Then, cautiously, he took her arm. “Did you make it through all right?”

  For a minute, all she wanted was to lie down in the dark beside him, speak softly for a time, their heads together on a pillow. She wanted to take his face in her hands, promise never again to be selfish. Wanted to tell him she had learned how to be delicate and generous with feelings, and that she would always be quick and strong in coming to defend him. She wanted to ask him to walk her through life, keep her on her feet, keep her alive. She looked into his eyes. They darted, not quite focused, and she lost her nerve.

  “Did you?” he repeated.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “I still know where I’m going.”

  “Still hooked on haole ways?”

  She winced as if he’d hit her in the stomach.

  “I understand. I learned things over there. Some haole are good, some bad. Like everything. A white guy saved my life, kept me from bleeding to death. I learned they cry, and hurt. Have feelings, just like us.”

  For a while he looked out at the sea. “I’ve got serious plans, Malia. I’m going to make it. In their world.”

  “Their world. How?”

  “G.I. Bill. I’m going back to university. Not night school, either. Full-time. I’m getting a degree on Uncle Sam.” He inhaled. “Then . . . law school. Maybe California.”

  Something in her sat down. He had come home too ambitious. They all had. He was headed for the bright lights, taking off again.

  She turned, wanting to strike him. “Law? I hope you’ve got what it takes.”

  She walked back to the campfire and music, tables of greasy food, spilled beer, and sat apart, running sand through her fingers. She thought of their child, wondering how he would take it, how much he could handle. She had the feeling he was beyond surprise, of any kind. Well, she had known combat, too.

  But somewhere in that endless war, in years of nightly blackout, Malia had made herself a vow. She would always hurt a little, deprive herself a little. After a while she would get used to the hurt, the pain, would almost forget it. Then she mostly wouldn’t notice it, because she would have forgotten what lack of pain, not hurting, was.

  She glanced at Krash across the sand. Just then he looked at her with all his heart. She saw his agony, he seemed to shi
mmer with it. As if he, too, had made a pact. To always hurt a little. To not give up that pain.

  ONE DAY KRASH SAT WITH KEO AND DESOTO IN THEIR OLD hangout, Smile Café, telling of his plans to study law, then set up a practise, help native Hawai‘ians get back on their feet.

  “You know, in Europe I met a Negro professor. And an Inuit Eskimo who plans to be a judge. I fought beside Guamanians who want to become doctors on the G.I. Bill. I thought, ‘Hell, I’m as smart as they are.’ My mama told me all my life, ‘Krash, you plenny akamai, real clever! Go university, get degree, den tell haole what and what!’ So—that’s what I’m gonna do.”

  He studied Keo, who was quiet. “What you think? Think I’m too ho‘okano, vain?”

  Keo squeezed his shoulder to show pride. “I think, Osborn Kuahi Kapakahi . . . you going be one tough son-of-a-bitch lawyer. You da future, bruddah.”

  Krash grinned, looking from one to the other. But he saw the emptiness in Keo’s eyes, as if the hours of each day passed at a far distance from him.

  “Keo, I’m real sorry about Sunny. But, listen—you got to have hope. Thousands of displaced folks still coming home from hospitals all over Asia.”

  Keo flinched, as if trying to throw this aggravation off his back. Then he remembered Krash was his best friend.

  “He got plenny hope,” DeSoto said. “He give up hope, I break his legs fo’ real.”

  Krash laughed and sipped his beer, so full of plans, his thoughts were having thoughts.

  “Your sister always wanted to travel, yeah? Maybe she’ll come with me to the mainland. After I get my degree, I’m going to try for law school. California.”

  DeSoto frowned. “How you mean, come wit’ you?”

  “Well . . . tell you the truth, there were a few girls in Europe. Just fool-around types, meant nothing. Malia, she was always on my mind. Even though that’s one stubborn wahine. Damn, one day I realized I love her. I want to marry her, take her with me as my wife.”

  Keo looked down at his beer, then looked at Krash.