Song of the Exile

by Kiana Davenport

  “Keep at it,” Krash said. “Talk until they’re so bored they start to listen.”

  He kept talking, on athletic fields, in parking lots, wherever youngsters gathered. His voice was honest, unabashed. What he had learned, what he had seen, what he thought progress was, and what it wasn’t. Sometimes there were war vets in a crowd. A veteran, using his plastic hand as an ashtray, threw his butts in Keo’s face.

  “You telling me I can’t be a voting U.S. citizen? What I lose my fucking hand for! I vote your way, what you going do for me? Give me back my hand?”

  Keo brushed ashes from his hair. “No. But as an independent nation, maybe we can give you back your pride, so you can wipe your own behind.”

  One day a young Hawai‘ian girl stood up. “Uncle, what’s the difference how our families vote? We’re such a small percentage, other groups will swamp us anyway. Most everyone but us wants statehood.”

  She was slender and lovely. She would have been his daughter’s age. Something scrolled in his mind: images scribbled on his retina. He wouldn’t look. It fed on looks: the past, always hovering. He snapped back to the here and now, leaning toward the girl.

  “Child, I can only answer from the heart. The U.S. government doesn’t give a damn about Hawai‘ians. We embarrass them; they would be happy if we disappeared. To vote yes on statehood will encourage politicians and the rich to wipe us out. In my heart, I believe this.”

  In time, the sum of these small acts, formulating arguments, believing them, unified things inside him. He began to see himself in their eyes. He was older, maybe he was even wise. It was most obvious with youngsters hungry for advice. Though most did not agree with him on statehood, slowly, cautiously, they approached, asking other things.

  Should they study classical haole music? Or authentic Hawai‘ian music—ancient chants accompanied with gourds and drums? Should they concentrate on popular slack-key guitar, falsetto singing? Should they be rock and rollers? Should they even study music? Or go out and learn from life?

  He made a pact with them. If they promised to sit down with their folks and discuss the pros and cons of statehood—if they promised to be informed and balanced in their views—he would teach them everything he knew about music. Most students agreed, and soon they were locked into rhythms of give and take.

  He began feeling a strange sense of renewal, a resurgence of love for music, for musical instruments, the human relationship to them. He tried to convey to students how every quality a human possessed, every wicked or noble reflection, was mirrored in each note he played.

  Sometimes while he talked, old folks drifted into the backs of auditoriums and churches. Their days were long. Now pau plate-lunch, it was time for midday snores. They sat on folding chairs, heads slowly drooping. An elder shouted in his dreams, shifted position and snored again. One old woman sat apart. Hands arthritic and scarred, elbows like cones of wrinkled bean curd. As Keo talked, she leaned forward on her cane, listening.

  “WE’RE LOSING.” KRASH STOOD TO THE SIDE OF A STAGE WHILE large crowds gathered. “Eighty percent of every crowd will vote YES.” He shook his head, exhausted. “Maybe they’re right. If we have to live in poverty, we may as well be a welfare state.”

  He pointed to a group of running, jumping kids, something haunted in their smiles. Teeth rotting to the gums from malnutrition. Legs calligraphed with open sores.

  “Kool-Aid. Spam. That’s all they know.”

  He’d lost weight. His handsome face was haggard. Newspapers had resurrected his campaign name, L‘au Lawyer, accusing him of trying to keep his people illiterate and poor. Now he had organized a VOTE NO festival in the town of Wai‘anae. Half a dozen bands volunteered. News spread up and down the Wai‘anae Coast, and even those for statehood couldn’t stay away.

  School grounds were set up like a fair. Food and game booths, a stage for entertainment. Keo counted twenty different groups scheduled to appear. Blues and rock musicians. Slack-key guitars. Kahiko chanters and pre-hula ha‘a dancers. Troupes costumed in Japanese, Korean, Filipino dress. Even groups for the Japanese circle dance, the tanko bushi. The air was electric. Whether folks wanted it or not, they felt their history changing.

  By noon crowds numbered in the hundreds. Strolling the grounds, folks listened to old-timers harmonizing in sweet falsetto with ‘ukuleles and guitars. They studied their neighbors, wondering how they would vote, no one really sure they wanted statehood as much as they wanted assurance that the new thing would be as good as the old.

  Gazing at chaotic crowds, the thrust and jolt of bodies, Keo was jerked back to another landscape, of guards, watchtowers, starving, broken inmates. The gurgle of latrines. Crowds would always do that: in the blindman’s buff of his senses, he would recall Woosung forever. He sat down, stroking his horn until he was back in the present, the thing he had to keep reaching for.

  A broadcaster urged people closer to the stage. Full of food and drink, they settled down on mats and blankets, children beside them with cheeks stained shaved-ice blue and purple. A conch shell blew. An ancient chanter took her place onstage, beating her gourd drum as twenty dancers spread out before her.

  She began to chant and slap the gourd as dancers bent their knees, dancing in unison. In low, controlled tones, she told of the fields and valleys surrounding them, once barren, now blessed with taro. She told how the sacred word ‘ina, land, came from the root word ‘ai, to feed, and how the sacred word ‘ohana, family, came from the root word ‘oha, sprouts of the heart-shaped taro plant, the staple and heartbeat of Hawai‘ians, each family an offshoot of a larger stock. Thus, ‘ina nourished the ‘ohana.

  She chanted praises to akua, gods living in stones that watched, in trees that listened. They were the guardians of the hard, dry soil of Wai‘anae, helping it soften in rains, yield to the hands of knaka maoli, indigenous Hawai‘ians. In monotones she praised the hands and bent backs of knaka that had labored for generations building taro terraces. She praised fish caught, ‘opihi gathered, that had strengthened those bodies that planted.

  The dancers followed her words, moving in the nineteenth-century native style with bent knees, uplifted heels. Not the lazy, swaying motions of twentieth-century hula but the hula ‘lapa, hula with chants, whose movements were emphatic and profound. Finally the chanter folded her hands, bringing the dancing to a close.

  Then came kachi-kachi bands, banduria bands. Mounting the stage with his band, Hana Hou!, for a moment Keo paused, looking down at young and ancient faces, many on welfare, some living on beaches, in parks.

  He leaned into the mike, breaking into Pidgin.

  “’Ey . . . Howzit!”

  Whistles, applause, folks yelling “Hula Man.”

  “Real proud fo’ be here wit’ you folks today,” he shouted. “First, going say one t’ing. Want you folks t’ink plenny hard fo’ when you going vote on statehood, yeah? You vote yes, mebbe you voting fo’ real junk-kine future. OK! Pau politics!”

  Relaxing, he held up his horn. “Well, some of you folks know me as jazz kine. But what I going do now is, I going try make dis horn talk fo’ you, Hawai‘ian style!”

  They cheered a little, quieting down as he began blowing trumpet in the softest way, songs reminiscent of the old days, of clacking stones, bamboo nose-flutes, sounds like wind through coco palms, through groves of talking jade-grass. Then he played “Papakolea,” composed by blind Johnny Almeida, honoring an impoverished community in Honolulu. He played “E Hulihuli Ho‘i Mai,” Turn and Come Back. A song of longing and romance popularized by Hawai‘i’s songbird, Lena Machado.

  He heard the crowd responding, singing the lyrics as he played. He felt their emotion, that old Hawai‘ian sadness, voices rising and rising as if drowning out fires of the death years. When he finished, there was silence in the crowd.

  He inhaled, leaned into the mike again. “Here’s somet’ing special. Hard to play. It’s from one opera, Turandot, by dis guy named Puccini.”

  Opera? Tremendous boos f
rom the crowd.

  “Yeah, yeah. I know. But listen, dis part called ‘Nessun dorma.’ What da guy saying is . . . ‘VINCIRÀ! I SHALL WIN!’ Good theme for Hawai‘ians, yeah?”

  Then his trumpet began to soar, echoing across the grounds, the fields and plains, into the valleys and ridges of the Wai‘anae Mountains. He soared until his sounds became so lost and seeking, people wept not knowing why. He finished slowly, like someone reaching understanding. Then he and the band eased out with pop songs, rock and roll.

  AS BAND FOLLOWED BAND, MALIA’S EYES WERE DRAWN TO A certain booth. At intermission Krash was paged: they wanted him onstage telling folks how, and why, to vote. From inside the booth, he appeared, grinning broadly. Big shoulders stretching the fabric of his shirt, he strode forward, making his way toward the stage. Seeing them standing together he swerved, drawing himself up.

  “ ’Ey, great show, Keo. . . . Hello, Malia.”

  A nerve pulsed beneath her eye. She imagined the skin going dark like blue ravines. Something in her slowed and ached. She nodded silently, then looked away. He shook his head, defeated, walked into the crowd. Watching him, she thought she imagined that his back arched, his hands were thrown into the air. She thought she imagined that he folded in slow motion. The gunshot seemed to come as an afterthought.

  She pushed Baby Jonah to the ground, covering her body with her own. Keo threw himself on both of them, then Malia struggled to her feet.

  “Stay with her!” she cried.

  With no sense of it, she pushed her way to Krash’s side. Seeing blood flowing from his head, she knelt thinking how much they had wasted. How much of life they should have held against their faces. We weren’t careful. We didn’t know how to live the fullness of each day that entered us.

  She looked up at the sky, begging for mercy for the father of her child. In that moment, she heard his watch ticking its lies, as if they still had time to court, and make amends. He lay facedown in the dirt. She saw blood spreading between his legs. There must have been two shots. The head, the back. She heard the whip of sirens. Squad cars circling the grounds.

  And then it wasn’t blood she smelled. In shock, his body had let go. Delicately, Malia moved his arm away from the puddle, then twisted his face into her lap. She slid a hand under his chest, trying to squeeze his heart and keep him alive. By now, the grounds were carpeted with human bodies, no one moving.

  Police surrounded a thin Hawai‘ian, wrestling him to the ground.

  “Filthy Communist!” he screamed. “Trying to keep us from statehood. Keep us Territory trash.”

  A woman half stood and shouted, “Look that man! He shot Krash bad.”

  Malia ripped off part of her skirt, trying to wrap his head. She had the head turned now, resting in her lap. She wasn’t sure what was in her lap. Bone, blood, a dead man. He moaned, it echoed in her ribs. In turning his head, somehow his body followed. Now he was lying faceup. Wet excrement stained her skirt beneath him.

  Pulling his body close, she felt his waste run down her hand and over her wrist, run down her arm to the elbow. Blood from his head dripped into her palm. She wiped his dirty cheeks with spit.

  He looked up, and his body trembled. “Malia . . . is it bad?”

  “Please,” she sobbed. “Don’t die.”

  Crowds got slowly to their feet. Police dragged the man to a squad car while others patrolled, telling folks to stay back, stay back. Medics came running with a stretcher.

  “Easy now. He may have a concussion. It’s one big motherfucking rock.”

  “Big . . . what?” she whispered.

  “There. Look at the size of it. Some crazy nut.”

  She shook her head. “I heard the gun. I saw the bullets knock him down.”

  Keo came up behind her. “Malia. A truck. A truck backfired.”

  She knew then she would never be rid of him. She could not stain herself with the waste and blood of a man, and not be haunted by him. She bent so close he felt heat from her forehead.

  “Krash. It was a rock. Only a rock . . .”

  He stared at her, struggling to comprehend.

  Folks pressed forward and were pushed back. After a while he cautiously pulled himself to his feet. For a moment he just stood there, amazed to be alive. Refusing the stretcher, he leaned on his father and walked slowly to a first-aid trailer. Women led Malia behind a booth, where they sponge-bathed her and gave her clean clothes.

  For almost an hour, crowds condensed in little groups, husbands holding wives, parents hugging children. A man announced Krash was all right, words echoing from the PA system.

  . . . a rock. A truck backfiring-iring-iring . . . No one really hurt. The scary moment pau-pau-pau . . . Now good-time music playing. Krash soon coming to address the crowd-crowd-crowd . . .

  She watched him step from the trailer in different clothes. Bandages covered the back of his head. A little shaky, he started for the stage, arms extended to the crowds. Then, seeing Malia, he stepped away from the police escorting him on either side.

  He stood before her. “Thank you.”

  She held her daughter’s hand. She looked down at the hand. To look up would be a final giving in. She still smelled what had been on her: his blood and other things. She smelled the curve of his back, his delicate heart-shaped earlobes. She felt his blood, hardening under her fingernails.

  He sighed, turned back to the waiting crowd. Then she heard something call. Distant, unignorable. In that moment, Malia felt life come clean. She gripped her daughter’s hand so hard, Baby Jonah winced.

  “Go. Walk beside him.”

  The girl looked at her confused.

  “Go!”

  Baby Jonah turned to Keo. “Why? Why I should walk with Uncle Krash?”

  Keo took her arm, and urged her forward. “Go. Walk with your father. Yes! He.”

  She turned and looked at Malia, her face going through configurations of shock. Her mouth hung, silent. Then, trancelike, she moved forward, falling into step with him. He stopped and gazed at her. She stood a little straighter.

  He climbed the steps onto the stage and looked down into faces, knowing he had lost, his people had lost. Most of Hawai‘i would vote YES on statehood. Still, he gripped the mike and talked. Of coming decades. Of the next generation who would resurrect and unify Hawai‘ians.

  “People think we are dying. But, no! We are only resting.”

  He never introduced her, but all the while he talked, Krash held Baby Jonah’s hand. His hand was huge and warm. She felt it sweating, felt its pads and creases. She relaxed, letting the full weight of her hand, of her being, rest within her father’s. He never let go. He stood in the day before a crowd, and held his daughter’s hand.

  ANAHOLA

  Time in a Glass

  HER DAUGHTER’S STARES, LIKE SOMEONE COUGHING IN HER FACE. Malia shuddered, imagining dark manias to come. The girl would try to kill her in her sleep. Or, worse, ignore her, totally ignore her.

  Now she knows who I am, and who he is, and now I pay. I raised her, kept her warm and fed. She was held, adored. Maybe not enough by me, but I was always there, watchdogging from the shadows. Every night of every childhood sickness, praying, begging Mother God give me the pain, the fevers. I sacrificed, gave her eduction. Now she can go to him for glamour. She can hate me all my days.

  There were long nights of weeping. Somehow she had wrapped herself up in this girl; she had become a mother. Now she was the voyeur, the one who stood aside to look but not partake, as father and daughter drove off together. Alone, they talked of books and life and how Baby Jo was going to be a surgeon. A judge. She wanted so badly to impress him.

  Knowing the story of his ribs, his missing lung, when she heard her father’s rattly breathing, she longed to nurse him, gather him in and stroke his brow. And when he brought her home and left her at the entrance to the lane, she stood taller because he was watching, his eyes walking her home. At such times Baby Jo showed pride, kept herself from running up and down shou
ting, Look, that is my papa! And she was quiet in the house, more loving, now that she knew she was loved and known by all who mattered.

  In little ways she toned down her voice, so it wasn’t as shrill. Her Pidgin grew softer, lilting, in the pattern of gracious island speech. She still called Keo “Uncle Papa.” Timoteo was still, forever, Grandpa. Her uncle DeSoto still awed and impressed her with his quiet ways, his offhand knowledge of odd facts—that the octopus was closely related to the camel, that centipedes ran faster than cheetahs.

  Only with her mother did malice show, each gesture cold and vacant. Her eyes pointed in the middle, darts dying to strike at Malia’s heart. Since the day she took her father’s hand, Baby Jo had not only retreated, she seemed to have erased herself completely from Malia’s life.

  One day, Malia entered her room and crossed the savage gulf between them.

  “Go ahead, hate me. For waiting sixteen years to tell. Hate me for being proud. And making you a proud one. For giving you good and matching clothes, and for your private-school tuition. Hate me for scraping and saving, so you can go to university, not the streets or jail.”

  She moved closer.

  “It doesn’t matter that my youth is past. Or that you hate me. As long as you don’t have to work the cannery, or bleed your arms into canefields. Because of me, there are things you will never have to do. Go! Go to your father. Maybe he can teach you extra ways to hate me.”

  Baby Jonah leapt at her. “You lied.”

  “I never lied. I never said. There is a difference.”

  The girl shut down, the room shut down. It was like standing inside a carcass.

  At night she prowled the house, stood outside the door of this daughter who openly disdained her, who looked down her cheekbones at her. She walked the lane bereft, remembering the other reason she had led Baby Jonah to her father. So she would have a champion, a protector. So she would not be mutilated into an old woman with a cane.