Malia’s legs began to shake.
“The man is haunted. He has only ever loved one woman. But he is dark, and you are proud. You still imitate the haole. In time you will be disgusted into wisdom. You will un-haole-fy your dreams.”
She turned back to Malia. “Now, enough of you. Your brother Keo—each night he crosses a bridge of nine windings.”
Malia nodded. “Someone he can’t forget. He’s searched and searched. Pono, can you tell me? Is the girl alive?”
Pono ceremoniously sat back. Her eyes snapped shut, and she was still. Then her lips moved rapidly, calling up a face. Her intake of breath was a roar.
“Sun-ja Uanoe Sung. The wild thread weaving through the tapestry. He has lost the design.”
“I would do anything you ask if you could help him,” Malia whispered. “He’s still so lost without her.”
Pono rocked, as if in prayer. Her arms ran with sweat, her breathing extremely labored. Her moans were knives scarring the soft, pale belly of the day. When she opened her eyes, they were white marble. Malia gasped. The marble slowly veined, bled into tan, then brown, then black as the red-black heart of aku.
What Pono saw so appalled her, she spoke with caution. “Sometimes we do not understand the implications of the search.”
“What does that mean? Is she alive?”
She lied because she had to. “Nothing is clear.”
“Then she is dead.”
Pono shook her head. “She is somewhere . . . confessing.”
“What should Keo do? What should I tell him?”
“Continue searching.”
“But, how? Where?”
“In his music. It will keep his playing pure.”
Malia felt as if she’d run a mile. She was utterly exhausted. “Will you let me come again? One day you might see Sunny in a vision. Hope will keep my brother sane.”
Pono nodded thoughtfully. “One day, when the vision holds, I will send for you.”
______
THE WOMAN STOOD AMONG CUSTOMERS, QUIETLY SURVEYING Malia’s shop. Expensive rug, walls covered with kapa. Handsome koa chairs with wide armrests. Gilt-edge mirrors, potted palms. A small shop, but each thing understated, tasteful. Even the dressmaker’s dummies wore elegant robes. She studied bolts of fabric until the customers left. Then, almost casually, she turned to Malia.
The woman’s face was lovely, eyes dark, a little slanted, lips slightly full. She was not slender but rather what folks called voluptuous, wearing a simple linen dress, spectator heels of good leather. Malia could have been looking at her own reflection, except that the woman was white.
“My name is Vivian,” she said. “I’m Krash’s wife.”
Instinctively, Malia backed away.
“I came to tell you I’m leaving him. You can have him.”
“What? How dare you . . .”
She sat down slowly, hugging herself. “Take him, please. He’s still in love with you.”
Malia shook her head, frightened. “I don’t want him.”
“Yes. You do. You’ve got his ribs. That is so . . . primitive. I don’t understand you people.”
“How could you understand us?” Malia’s whole body shook. “Understanding has to be earned.”
Vivian nodded, looked about helplessly. “I knew I got him on the rebound after you. But he was so handsome, so ambitious. Seven years. Now I realize I never knew him. Never had a clue.”
“What did you expect?” Malia asked. “Someone predictable? A man you could control?”
She shook her head. “Krash is smart, he could go places. But he only wants to succeed here, in Honolulu!”
Malia stood straighter, her English accent a little more pronounced. “Yes. We speak English here, we even practise law. Did you think he would give up his identity? Live on the mainland as a change-face?”
Vivian sat up, half defiant. “My father has connections, he would have helped set him up in practise.”
Folding her arms, Malia exhaled, almost sorry for this Vivian. She seemed decent, even a little tragic. Then she remembered Krash had slept with her for seven years, his lips had been all over her. She suddenly wanted to strike her, suck out her eyes.
“I know I’m ignorant about your culture,” Vivian said. “I’m just not meant for the islands. Your local talk. The food you eat. I have no friends. All his friends talk about is ‘‘ina, ina.”
“Land is what Hawai‘ians are about.”
“But, you’re not forward-thinking. Don’t you see? You people can’t waste precious land on farming, planting taro. You need developments. Hotels. That’s what progress is.”
“Hotels! So my nephews can be busboys?” Malia turned away, afraid she would hurt the woman. “Please. Get out of here.”
Vivian slowly stood. “I’ve followed you down streets, wondering what you have that I don’t have. Maybe it’s pride. I never had to struggle.”
Malia turned back and stared at her, her voice growing soft, almost weary. “You privileged women, so naive. Struggle doesn’t teach you pride. It teaches you to take what comes.”
She stretched her arms out, turning them. Tattooed and pitted from too-strong disinfectants—her years as chambermaid. She held her hands up closer. Palms and fingertips deeply trenched, crisscrossed and bunched with needle scars.
“Would you have pride in these? Would you want to even look at them?”
She looked, then her eyes met Malia’s. “He doesn’t want you for your hands. He loves you.” She pointed at their reflection in a mirror, their resemblance remarkable. “Why do you think he married me?”
“Please, leave,” Malia insisted. “I don’t want any part of this.”
“You are part of it. You’re all of it. I’m going back where I belong.” In the doorway, Vivian turned to her. “You know, it’s your child I think about.”
Watching her walk down the street, Malia felt numb. She swallowed slowly, calling forth familiar things. There was her throat, and there was her tongue. Then someone moved behind her, Keo, bringing lunch through the back entrance.
He didn’t skirt the edges, didn’t negotiate. “I heard everything.”
She set out plates and napkins. “Good. Then we can eat.”
They sat on folding chairs, chopsticks waving like antennae. The sushi and pickled ginger tasted like chalk.
“When are you going to tell her?”
“Tell her what?”
“Who her father is.”
She threw her lunch into the trash. “Imagine that hillbilly coming to my shop. Telling me her problems.”
“Even a stranger is sorry for your kid. Malia, do you think anyone believes she’s Rosie’s girl? That she’s hnai? She looks so much like you and Krash it’s tragic. It’s a joke.”
“That bastard. How dare he bring a white wife back to Honolulu.”
Keo laughed. “You threw him away. You denied him his child.”
“She’s not his child.”
He stared at her. “Whose is she, then?”
“How do I know! It was the war. I had to support Mama and Papa, while you and Desoto were off having your adventures.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying we made choices.” Her voice turned bitter. “You chose Paris. I chose . . . Hotel Street. And all that that implies.”
Keo slowly stood, and took her in his arms. “My God. I never stopped to think what you had to do to keep things going.”
She hung her head, then pulled away. “I had dreams. Remember? I would have given anything to live in Paris, like you. Then Pearl Harbor came, and everything got crazy. Don’t ask me any more.”
He sat down, not letting go of her hand. “I will always honor you. Because of you our parents never had to beg. But don’t tell me Baby Jonah isn’t Krash’s kid. You thought you were too good for him.”
Malia sat down beside him, trying to be honest. “Keo, I always felt he was lying in ambush. Him and his cousins from Wai‘anae. Real low-class
country jacks. Crime. Welfare. If I had stayed with him, I would have ended up out there.”
“You loved him. Your letters were full of him.”
“Having a child does that. I softened. I thought I would take whatever he offered. Then, he came home full of plans. Degrees. Law school. He never mentioned where I fit in.”
Keo sighed. “He wanted to marry you, I swear. He wanted to take you to the mainland as his wife.”
“He never asked. Ah, well . . .”
She was over forty now, still firm and lovely, still so possessed of Hawai‘ian grace—a fluidness in gestures, in her movements—she could have had almost any man, of any color. But now she had the confidence of moderate success; she had achieved that alone, without compromise or loss of pride.
“. . . now I’m too busy for such foolishness.”
Keo shook his head. “I’ll tell you what happened. You realized after all was said and done, you love a man with brown skin. You’ve watched Baby Jonah grow, and every day you look at her, you see her father’s features. Everybody knows but her. And maybe even her.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean even though she calls you tita, sister, she says it with sarcasm. Malia, what are you doing to this girl?”
She rubbed her forehead, weary. “Trying to save her. Don’t you see, if I admit I’m her mother, then I have to tell her who her father is.”
“You would wreck a young girl’s life out of vanity? You already stole twelve years from her.” He stood, looking down at her. “You make me feel real shame, Malia. If you don’t tell her . . . one day I will. Everything.”
ONE MORNING IN HER SHOP, PINNING A DRESS ON BABY JO, Malia saw slight swelling, the beginning of breasts.
“You’re getting buds,” she said softly.
The girl blushed so deeply, Malia felt her heat. Breathing in her young-girl sweat, fragrant hair, luminous shoulders smelling like damp ginger, she sat back in shock. This child is the one thing I will never regret. She wanted to tell her then, begin to tell her, who she was, who she came from. But the habit of not telling was too fixed between them.
Does she know? Malia wondered. Does she hate me? Sometimes she felt all she really knew of this girl was her dress size. Her chest and waist measurements. She rarely confided in Malia.
“You should talk more,” Malia said. “Ask me more important things.”
Baby Jo turned away. Her thoughts were not Malia’s to claim. Even when they sat alone at the kitchen table, she looked away from Malia, focusing on something safe. She chewed as slowly as possible, knowing she wasn’t expected to talk with her mouth full.
Sometimes Malia ambushed her in the bathroom, or the garage. “How is school?”
“OK . . . boring.”
“It isn’t boring if you use your brain.”
“What you t’ink I use? My feet?”
It was sarcastic, but Malia laughed. Baby Jo backed away, thinking she was laughing at her.
One day she stood beside Malia, listening to the metal gasp and snip of pinking shears.
“How’s come Uncle Papa get nightmares?” She had heard Keo crying out in his sleep.
“The war,” Malia said softly. “A girl he loved disappeared.”
“She died?”
“Not sure. Don’t know what really happened.”
Baby Jo turned slowly, looked her in the eye. “Not knowing truth give plenny heartache. Yeah?”
Malia wanted to shake her then. Tell her she should be grateful for having been born, for Malia hiding her in her stomach, for bearing her at all. Theirs was a silent, cadenced dance where they carefully skirted each other, most tense when they actually touched. She seldom entered the girl’s room. She couldn’t remember Baby Jo ever entering hers. Sometimes she pretended to talk on the phone in the hallway, just so she could watch Jo in her little room moving amongst her things, watch how delicately she touched them.
Now and then she stood in that room, hearing her daughter’s soft inhalations. She picked up snapshots, touched her clothes, her talismans. Just now she was in the chubby stage, her features extra round. But she was growing into a beautiful girl, pale but clearly Hawai‘ian in her big bone structure, large kanaka hands and feet. And she was especially smart. Except round Malia, where she became clumsy and sullen, retreating into chop-suey Pidgin: Hawai‘ian and “Portagee” Pidgin mixed with Flip and Pk Pidgin, so at times she was almost incomprehensible to Malia. Everything was da kine, da kine. W’addat? W’addat?
Watching Baby Jo fawn over Keo while ignoring her, Malia began to bully her, force her into conversation.
“Any of your girlfriends going out with boys?”
Baby Jo tensed. “. . . Two. Mebbe.”
“Any of them menstruating yet?”
The girl cringed, mortified.
“Soon happen to you, Jo.”
“Ugh. Mo’ bettah I been born one boy.”
“Boys are what you have to stay away from now.”
“Fo’ why?”
“That’s how you make a baby, lying with a boy. By and by I will explain it.”
She leveled her eyes at Malia. “What you t’ink, ‘tita’? You t’ink I don’ know nutting? One boy wen da kine one girl wit’ his da kine. And, dat what make one baby!”
“Speak English!” Malia shouted.
“Fo’ why?” Baby Jo cried. “What you take me fo’? I try talk li’ you, folks t’ink I plenny ll!”
Yet teachers said in class her English was perfect. Her grades were excellent.
“Stop being ashamed to show you’re smart.” Malia shook her gently. “Don’t let life slip through your fingers.”
“Let go!” Baby Jo wrenched herself away. “Why you fuss wit’ me so much? You not my muddah. You my ‘tita,’ remembah?”
“I’m sending her to Sacred Heart Academy,” Malia vowed. “Get her away from project kids.”
“Put a lid on it!” Keo said. “She’ll test you until the day you square with her.”
“Sacred Heart?” Leilani sat down, shocked. “How you going get money fo’ private school?”
“Watch me.”
NOW MALIA SAT IN HER SHOP UNTIL MIDNIGHT, SEVEN NIGHTS a week. From across the street, an old woman with a cane watched her hunched like a racer, urging the Singer on as she called out resolutions.
“She will wear clothes that are pressed, and change with the seasons. And matching accessories. She will own leather shoes, not rubber slippers. She will have friends who live on paved streets, not rutted lanes. In real houses, not termite bungalows. She will have book bags, after-school activities. She will study languages. She will go to university.”
Sometimes she sat back. What was the point of her daughter being educated if she starved to death? She bent to the Singer, calling out again.
“She will have a good business head. She will always have a bank account. She will not take men seriously. She will never compromise. Men will always step aside.”
She wanted to save her daughter the debasement and debris of men, the scars that might be permanent. Her resolutions became like chants she shouted while she stitched, creating a blueprint for her daughter. A sequence and procedure. She knew that some stalled and aching twilight she would have to tell her who her father was. By then, Malia hoped, Baby Jonah would forgive her.
‘AWAPUHI LAU PALA WALE
Ginger Leaves Yellow Quickly; Things Pass Too Soon
ONE DAY, JONAH’S WATCH, SENT FROM ITALY. RUSTED, SMELLING strangely of manure. Keo sat in ‘A‘ala Park, imagining combat, the watch flung into a ditch on his brother’s severed hand. It had stopped at 3:15, the same time of day he was liberated from Woosung Camp. Thirteen years, and he was still returning and returning. Waiting for his mainspring—memory—to snap.
Now he held Jonah’s watch, bereft. He stumbled into a church where small, fat candles in red jars pulsed like hearts. He knelt and lit a candle. The old woman watched as he left the church, so fit, impeccable, still so attractive. But so
mething suddenly seen or remembered had struck him down with grief. She hung her head, wifed him out of habit.
. . . Come, dear one. Wipe your brow. Brush your hair. We’ll walk along, eat roasted chestnuts by the Seine. Or put on soft pajamas, sit by our tiny window overlooking the rue, and drink oolong from cracked china. Yes. Life slowly empties. But only in the way a teacup empties. Its concaveness still implies the tea. Tea-ness lingers. . . .
She had become his unseen companion. Snail-shell knuckles humped round the handle of her cane. Shoes like beached amphibians. An old hard chair of a woman. Yet, something kindly in the eyes as she looked after him, following always at a distance. She never moved close. Never consciously moved close to anything.
He walked up Kalihi Lane, oddly at peace. It happened lately. For no reason, a mood would overtake him; he would feel safe, watched over. Now he studied the ebb and flow of family in his father’s garage. Uncles drank beer and smacked their thighs, playing hanafuda. Aunties “talked story,” cleaning just-caught squid. DeSoto’s two boys practised judo while cousins, like running stitches, flew iridescent dragon kites. All tangled blood and sinew, falling across each other’s lives like soft lightning.
Hours tapered down the lane. Folks gossiped in chop-suey Pidgin while, next door, Mrs. Silva’s grandchild practised French. “. . . il fait beau, il fait chaud, il fait froid . . .” And somewhere from a dark, cool room, Gabby Pahinui singing “Hi‘ilawe,” then Aunty Genoa Keawe warbling “Ke Kali Nei Au.”
Keo sat down and leaned his head back, finding comfort in this ancient groove, this old inherited taxonomy. He had begun to understand that nothing he accomplished would be as heroic as staying here, staying put. His parents were aging. He suddenly saw their narrow, unembellished world as rare. Life, to be cherished.
Some nights after playing at the club, he stood in their living room, looking hard at things, as if he had never seen them. He opened drawers that contained only bare necessities. A bottle of glue, a ball of string. Sepia snapshot of an ad for a DeSoto. In this dear house, even the simplest thing was shabby. Glue marbleized in the jar. The string crumbling, and the snapshot.
His parents’ room was just as stark. Old koa wardrobe, double bed with threadbare sheets. A chest of drawers upon which lay a rosary, framed pictures of their children. On the wall, a crucifix. Windows hung with old crochet. There was nothing extra.
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