Song of the Exile

by Kiana Davenport

  They were elders “talking story” and he was a boy again, entranced. Sometimes he was moved to laughter, often tears. As he bent and wiped his eyes, they wrapped their massive arms round him, crooning. In their lavish, compassionate natures, they forgot who was seeking legal counsel, who was comforting whom.

  “No, Krash boy, no mo’ cry. Pau crying!” They hugged him like a child. “So sad you all alone, sad yo’ wife left. You try come stay wit’ us. I make you ‘ono pig and poi. Bumbye you feel real good!”

  But hearing the same stories, day after day, he saw how native Hawai‘ians were being ghettoized, slowly erased. Now, with the prospect of statehood before them, folks questioned the term “equality as Americans.” In poll after poll, foreigners—island settlers—voted in favor of statehood. Most native Hawai‘ians, now a minority in their own lands, voted against.

  Week after week Krash stood before crowds, urging his people to stand firm and VOTE NO on statehood.

  “They want to drain the ocean from our veins, turn our blood to stone, so we’ll forget what was done to us!”

  A woman shouted up at him. “I no agree wit’ you! Statehood mo’ bettah, give us one voice. Else, how we going get good jobs, how educate our kids? You like we stay on welfare fo’ evah?”

  He struggled for patience. “Have you forgotten our history? In 1893, white sugar barons overthrew our queen, stole all our lands . . . without the knowledge of the U.S. Congress! Five years later, the U.S. president illegally annexed all of Hawai‘i. Statehood won’t give us better jobs. Or educate our kids. It will only give them total power over us.”

  While locals stood shouting back and forth, a big, husky man in construction boots climbed onstage, grabbed the mike from Krash, and started yelling.

  “You folks ll, or what? You like vote fo’ statehood, den vote! Fo’get dis guy wit’ fancy legal tongue. Nutting going bring back Queen Lili‘uokalani. Time fo’ turn da page! Fo’ welcome statehood!”

  An old Chinese man yelled up at him. “You one crazy fuckah, you. If lands stolen in da first place, how can be legal statehood? Dis statehood going benefit da rich, and bury da knaka! And all us poor folks, too.”

  The construction worker danced across the stage, weaving and sermonizing. Krash gave him his five minutes, then tried to retrieve the mike. When the man pushed him away, Krash sighed, stepped back, and sliced the air with the edge of his hand, karate-chopping him in the neck. He folded like a paper doll. Bowing to the whistling, cheering crowd, Krash went on with his talk.

  “My brother here is half right. We can’t turn back the clock. But we can demand apologies, and reparations. The U.S. says statehood will improve our lives. If they want to improve our lives, give us back our lands! Give us a couple million dollars cash, for the years they’ve profited from those lands. Then we’ll talk statehood.”

  While he helped the staggering man to his feet and off the stage, a priest stepped forward.

  “Krash, I don’t agree with you. A U.S. citizen has rights. People have to listen. Congress has to listen. If we get statehood, we can vote native Hawai‘ians into positions of power. They’ll give us representation in the state and federal legislature.”

  He looked down, shaking his head. “Father, I guarantee, even with statehood, forty-fifty years from now there won’t be one Hawai‘ian or part-Hawai‘ian in Congress or the House of Representatives. Not one.”

  Keo stood amongst the crowd, only half convinced Krash was right. Whatever its drawbacks, statehood would give Hawai‘ians dignity, a voting voice in U.S. politics. Some Hawai‘ians felt that was important. They spat on Krash in the streets. A rock had been thrown through his window.

  Now they shouted up at him. “ ’Ey, bruddah. How’s come all a sudden you fighting progress? Big education, now you t’ink you too good fo’ be one state. Maybe you like Hawai‘i be one monarchy again? Maybe you like be king!?”

  He laughed, exhausted. Gaining their trust was like one-handed cat’s cradle, a maneuver taking infinite patience. He stepped to the edge of the stage, half kneeling, leaning in toward the crowd.

  “You folks remember me? I started out nothing, one lazy beachboy from Wai‘anae. Then the U.S. Army sent me overseas. Said fight for freedom. I fought so good, I lost one lung. Then, I came home and looked around. . . .”

  He spread his arms out dramatically. “You call this freedom? You want to stay fifty years in broken-down shacks? I got elders, family and friends—thirty-five years ago each one applied to the Department of Hawai‘ian Homelands for a plot of land. Land that was supposedly set aside for native Hawai‘ians, for one dollar per plot each year. Instead it’s leased to foreign corporations, the U.S. military. All these years, those folks are still on the waiting list for land.”

  His voice reverberated across the grounds. “I guarantee you, even with statehood, thirty years from now when they are in their nineties, some will still be on that list, waiting for a plot of land. That’s why they call it the Hit List.”

  People stood in knots, confused. They needed so badly to believe. To have something to believe in. By then they were already witnessing the slicing up of valleys for highways, resort development of dwindling shorelines that killed off old fishing villages. In the city, ghettoes grew.

  Believing statehood would either save them or extinguish them, friends, even families, grew drastically divided. In Palolo, an angry wife bit off her husband’s cheek. A man shaved his neighbor’s hunting hound completely bald in Nanakuli. Near ‘A‘ala Park, the owner of the Mango Luncheonette, vociferously in favor of statehood, watched his cousin open a new business just across the street. The Anti-Mango Luncheonette. Day after day, crowds taunted each other from opposite sidewalks. “VOTE NO! . . . VOTE YES! . . .”

  TWO STREETS OVER FROM THE ANTI-MANGO LUNCHEONETTE, she watched an old kahuna lapa‘au, an herb healer, mash root of morning glory in sea salt. Then, softly chanting, the woman wrapped a ti leaf round Sunny’s leg, spreading on the morning-glory poultice. Ti leaf kept the root from burning. Lastly, she covered the leaf with kapa, barkcloth.

  The kahuna smelled of camphor, which always took Sunny back to Shanghai. Then, there was another smell, which took her to Rabaul. The sweet, damp odor of rot. In Rabaul maggots had eaten away infected flesh round her shrapnel wound. The wound had healed, but bone, too, had been infected. Each year when gourds called—when windy seasons, presaging winter storms, rattled dried gourds hanging in nets—her leg pain grew so intense, Sunny’s body shook, even her hair trembled.

  “I wait for death,” she whispered. “What is the point of such suffering if it does not lead to death? But life does not oblige me.”

  “Life.” The old kahuna sighed. “So short, is hardly time for laughter.”

  Sunny listened to crowds out in the streets. If one began to laugh, how would one stop?

  The woman patted her shoulder. “Now I bring best medicine for bone.” She came back with a bowl of poi. “Eat. You so skinny, almost mist.”

  “That is my Hawai‘ian name. Uanoe. Gathering Mist.”

  She dipped her main poi finger in the bowl, swirled it round, and brought it to her lips. Soothing pounded-taro paste slid down her throat, her neck so thin the woman watched her gears shift as she swallowed. When she was full, the woman brought her ‘awa tea. Sunny drank in grandmother sips, feeling a mild narcosis as pain slipped across the room.

  “Now, rest. See coco palm outside? When shadow of coco palm is longer than tree, I wake you.”

  Her eyes drooped. Outside, a young girl swung back and forth from a rope of bark fastened to a tree. She sat on a crosspiece at rope’s end, holding firmly with hands and knees while her brother pushed her from behind. Together they sang, “Phenehene no‘a no‘a.” Come, play the stone game!

  She dozed, and it was small-kid time, and she was singing with her brother, Parker.

  How fearless we were. Flying dragon kapa kites, praying the wind would snatch us from the cliffs!

  He had gone down on
a battleship east of Okinawa. The same week they had cut out her womb, an army officer showed her Parker’s name on a manifest. She read his name, and blinked. Now diving deep, Sunny dreamed she found his body on the submerged deck. She wrapped him in ti leaves, packed hot sea salt round his body so he would sweat out death. She brought a full gourd to his lips.

  “Brother, here is juice of limu, seaweed. To strengthen you, rinse you back to life. So you can meet our sister, Lili. And little Anahola. I have brought them home. . . .”

  He pushed the gourd away. “Go! I am at peace. Here among the aku.”

  She woke up weeping.

  “Crying very good,” the old kahuna whispered. “How many years you never cry? Bumbye, Rain-Catcher Spider drink your tears! She weave cathedrals from your sorrow.”

  Turning her head, Sunny saw a graceful, ruby red spider mending the gossamer rigging of her web. She leaned very close. Smelling her tears, the spider paused and cautiously approached, eyes tiny golden broadcasts. Then, in a jeweler’s hunch, she jumped from her web and ran across Sunny’s cheek, nuzzling a teardrop. Glittering and growing a richer red as she sucked down the tear. A little drunk and dreamy, she ran back to her web, weaving human sadness into the arches and loggias of her universe. Sunny touched her cheek and watched.

  How quietly she weaves. How patiently she bides her time.

  KRASH AND KEO DROVE TWENTY MILES WEST OF HONOLULU TO an area of astonishing natural beauty. Miles of canefields, brooding emerald valleys. Up in the sharp, bold Wai‘anae Mountain Range—paralleling the Ko‘olaus to the east—were steep ridges, rain forests of double canopies. Here were sacred heiau, ancient temples, and caves, spirit dwellings of dead chiefs. Here was also a district where, within eroding houses, people’s lives were endangered. This was what drove Krash back and back to Wai‘anae, his birthplace on the island’s arid leeward coast.

  He spoke softly now, reminding Keo how, in the early twentieth century as land increased in value, native Hawai‘ians had been forced out of Honolulu and Waikiki. Many had moved back to the plains and valleys of this rural coast. Strung with towns named Nanakuli, Lualualei, Ma‘ili, Wai‘anae, Makaha, Mkua, it was a haven where mountains and the sea shielded farmers and fishermen from outsiders. But this had not been an easy land. Much of it was barren, covered in kiawe and coral rock. There was little water.

  Through the decades, love of ‘ina, land, had slowly changed the Wai‘anae Coast from barren to fertile. Gardens grew, and fruit trees, fields of heart-shaped taro leaves blanketed the valleys. Day after day farmers waded knee-deep through rich, gravylike ooze of irrigated plots, weeding and nurturing, praying over tender young l‘au, taro tops.

  Lives were once again based on the old tradition of bartering and sharing. It was still a hard and challenging land. It kept the people hard, wary of outsiders. Haole saw the Wai‘anae Coast as primitive and dangerous, rebellious knaka living in shacks of weathered wood and rusted tin. But this coast had one thing much coveted: broad white strands of beaches, the pure unblemished sea.

  As they drove on, Krash told of spies who came sly-eyeing for resort developers and land speculators.

  “They get caught by locals, their cars are overturned and set on fire. Trying to hitchhike back to the city, one guy was picked up by a sympathetic-looking couple. They left him on Farrington Highway stark naked!”

  He pointed mauka, toward the mountains. “Still plenty hardship here. See those lush fields, Keo? Taro is thirsty, needs water for irrigation. Farmers need millions of gallons every day, or taro roots will rot. Already bad signs. One day farmers will be rationed. Taro, our staff of life, will be threatened.”

  That night they sat with Krash’s family, as cousins told of waiting fifteen years for two acres of Homestead land. Then five more years before they were granted loans to build their house—under Hawai‘ian Homelands contracts with substandard companies. Construction was so bad, within a year sewage backed up. Their house had such a dreadful smell, they slept outside in tents. They told how other Homestead folks were forced to use the same construction companies. Faulty wiring made their houses booby traps. A dog was electrocuted. A boy switched on a radio that blew up in his face.

  “It happening all over dese damned Homestead lots,” a cousin said. “Folks flush toilet, da house blow up!”

  Krash’s mother spoke up wearily. “I and Krash’s papa ten years on Homestead waiting list. Finally get our lot in 1931, den get our house built . . .”

  She dropped her head, and Krash continued for her.

  “First night we moved in, my bedroom wall collapsed. Then the lights went. We moved round the house for months wearing headlamps like miners. Now, twenty-eight years later, Mama and Papa still get mouth sores from rusty water. They live in this house with year-round colds.”

  Each year during heavy rains his parents had to wear rubber boots, slogging through water leaking from ceilings and open junctures of walls. The water formed swirling reservoirs in every room.

  “Like one indoor rivah,” his father said. “Sometimes, ho man! you nevah seen such worms. Plenny good fo’ fish bait.”

  Some Homesteaders had waited ten years for wells and electric hookup. Now, fearing for their lives, they slept in trucks beside collapsing houses. When they marched in protest, they were evicted by sheriffs and armed deputies. Landless, hopeless, Hawai‘ians began to “squat” on beaches, under bridges. Living in crates, abandoned cars.

  That night the two men sat silent.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Krash said. “If I’d married Malia, she would have ended up out here, wearing headlamps and rubber boots.”

  Keo shook his head. “No she wouldn’t. And that’s not what I was thinking.”

  “Well . . . ?”

  “I was wondering what I can do to help you . . . to help our people.”

  NEXT MORNING, THEY HIKED UP INTO THE FIELDS TO A LO‘I kalo, a taro patch.

  “Come on, man.” Krash rolled up his pants. “This is the sacred food brought by our first ancestors. You can’t understand land rights, or water rights, or anything we’re fighting for, until you’re squatting in mud, planting and mulching and weeding taro.”

  Keo gave a shout, kicked off his shoes, pulled off his shirt and pants. Moving off alone, he slogged up to his knees in rich black mud. How many years since he waded through a lo‘i, feeling wet earth coat his limbs? Not since he was a boy. Now, bending low, an elbow on one knee, other arm outstretched yanking weeds between plants, he remembered his mother “talking story,” telling how ancestors had used only their strong hands and digging-sticks to build vast systems of irrigation ditches for their crops. Even now in certain valleys one could still see terrace after terrace of ancient kalo.

  Hours passed, though Keo didn’t know they were hours. He felt no ache from arduous bending and pulling, felt no thirst from the sun. After a while he felt nothing, he no longer existed as a singular thing. He and the land and the weeds he pulled and the heart-shaped glistening taro leaves and the mud and the air seemed one. He looked at his hand and no longer felt it, he could no longer name it. His hand flowed into leaf that flowed into earth that poured into the lava heart of his island pouring into sea.

  He sat down slowly in luscious mud, his hands full of oozing earth. He had forgotten it. But, maybe it was waiting in him all the time. Aina. Land. He had had to let the earth decide when to reclaim him, had to let it come for him, knowing when he was ready. He sat a long time, sun on his dark shoulders, mud drying on him like long gloves, the rest, the waist-down of him, deep in wet black earth. Mountains behind him, the ocean before him, forming a cradle. That was how Krash found him at day’s end. A child, rocking in his cradle of taro fields.

  IHU PANI

  Closed Nose: Deep Dive into Knowledge

  WITH STATEHOOD LOOMING FOR HAWAI‘I, IT SEEMED EVEN NATURE fought back. The sea grew more aggressive. Each night man-made beaches of Waikiki flowed back into the ocean so that, at dawn, waves lapped at terraces o
f smart hotels. While tourists slept in costly rooms, dump trucks brought in more sand, which the sea rapidly swallowed.

  Sand rakers ran from their jobs, swearing they saw giant night-squid come ashore, hoovering the sands, sucking down half a sea-wall. Under a full moon, three Filipino waiters watched the ten-story Reef Hotel sway like a dancer, as if from oceanic tremors. All warnings that Waikiki was on the heaving edge of collapse. VOTE NO supporters grew in small increments.

  In spasms of uncertainty Keo stood before high school and college students. He even addressed marching bands, church choirs, urging them to get their elders to VOTE NO. This younger generation challenged him, Hawai‘ians as well as other locals.

  “Uncle, why you want to keep us from being first-class Americans? Our folks pay plenny federal taxes. They fought in World War Two, Korea.”

  A Chinese youth stood up. “We should elect our governor, not have him appointed by Washington, D.C. We should be allowed to vote for the president of the U.S. Otherwise, we’re second rate!”

  And then a Portuguese. “Uncle, we want dignity and prestige. When we go to college on the mainland, we want to be accepted as equals, not Territorians.”

  When Keo tried to argue, they shouted him down.

  “You want us to go back to a monarchy? Class system and kapu?”

  Sometimes when he addressed them, his bowels went soupy, he felt his heart beating in his throat. He had no idea what he was saying, he just wanted to save their lives.

  “Don’t you see, statehood can only be achieved illegally. Because we were made a Territory illegally. The U.S. government should officially return our lands. Then give us the right to choose to be a state.”

  His audiences were so young, even their parents didn’t remember the monarchy, or forced annexation. The past was past. All they wanted was higher education, better jobs.