Song of the Exile

by Kiana Davenport

  One night she sat up calling, “Sunny!” Still wanting to believe the woman and the cane had been a dream.

  Next day in her shop she couldn’t work. Fabrics unstitched, scissors gasped open by themselves, attacking the air with snapping Xes. She thought PONO even before the Singer stitched the name. Seeing the letters, Malia laid her head against the machine’s cool enameled surface, like leaning against hard black lava. She smelled the smog and sulphur of the Big Island, Island of Volcanoes, where Pono waited.

  Taking the inter-island ship again, Malia watched Honolulu diminish in the distance, enormously relieved to shed this town that was her prison, her stagnation. Then she felt terror: what it would be like to watch Honolulu fade forever. To never again see silver-tasseled canefields, or smell the sweet-sticky odor of pines from the canneries, or see clouds thrash and tear over the Ko‘olaus. To never again hear her daughter’s purring snores, never smell the rust on the old screen door her father latched each night to keep them safe.

  One rusty little latch. O Papa! It wasn’t enough. The world broke in anyway.

  Docking at the Big Island, Malia was struck once more by the landscape of black lava, where earth’s crust still burped and parted, where its flesh overflowed, still giving birth. Then she felt Pono’s touch, her hands reaching all the way down to the coast, fingers smelling of eucalyptus, soil, gardenia coffee-blossoms. It was even Pono weather—moody, tempestuous, rumbling skies. Then clouds were torn apart and, with piratic majesty, the sun stood blinding, plundering.

  She looked up into the misty blue hills of the coffee belt, the old mountain towns called Holualoa, Kainali‘u, Kealakekua. And Captain Cook, where Pono waited—a woman of uncompromise, who would not allow the world to walk right through her. Riding up and up into the hills of another era, Malia felt drugged, air so heavy with ginger blossoms that horses galloped sideways. She felt tension fold back like a fan, felt childlike and calmed.

  Then came a slight burn to her nostrils, the Big Island smell of fog and volcanic ash, giving off a sulphurous, otherworldly odor. Somewhere on this island, mountains shuddered and spewed; somewhere the earth was unstitching, showing its boiling lava veins. Malia stood at the end of the rocky driveway off Nap‘opo‘o Road. Through a silent corridor of trees, once more she entered Pono’s world, above the lawn, the brooding plantation house.

  The small, wiry woman named Run Run, with a cheery little girl’s face, stood in the cool gulf of a doorway. She stepped out on the lnai, deeply inhaling a cigarette, then puckered her mouth, exhaling perfect smoke rings.

  “Who you?”

  “Malia. I came before.”

  “So? Whatchoo want now?”

  “The last time I was here, I gave Pono an antique silk kimono. . . .”

  The woman’s eyes danced, full of mischief. “What—Indian give? You like take back?”

  “No, no,” Malia cried. “I need to ask her to explain the face, there was a face—”

  Run Run suddenly bent forward, shaking her finger.

  “You da one! Dat kimono make Pono come real pupule. Every night she cursing, sobbing, rip out stitches of old face, sew in new face. Den change mind, rip out stitches ovah and ovah. Nevah seen her like dis. Pono not kine fo’ sit in quiet corner, stitching. She of da sea and sky. Real WATCHOUT!-kine wahine.”

  Malia moved closer. “Run Run. I have to see her. Please. Tell her I have seen the living face . . . it’s Sunny Sung.”

  The woman looked down the road toward the ocean, a tapestry of living indigos and jades.

  “Walk da road. Stand da cliff. If she like see you, bumbye you know.”

  She walked down Napo‘opo‘o Road, then forked off into the forest toward a cliff overlooking the sea. She scanned the water, seeing no one. Then in the shattered mural of blues and greens she saw Pono surfacing, tearing herself from the lip of a wave. She paced the sands, chanting at the sky. She flung out her long black hair, unwrapped her wet sarong, bared her golden body to the sun.

  She knelt, scrubbing her arms and breasts and hips with sea salt gathered in a lava bowl. Salt smoothed the skin, kept it firm and ever-thirsty for the ocean. Malia held her breath as Pono rushed back to the sea. She bowed her head, cupped her hands and drank, as ancestors had drunk to heal war wounds, as even now elders restored their health with daily drafts. She entered deep waters again, diving and soaring, graceful and hypnotic.

  Malia lost track of time. Once she thought she saw her surface, finned and snouted. After an hour, or many hours, Pono reemerged, stood once more on the sand. Then turning in a slow, archaic way, she gazed up at Malia, a gaze like black stones laid upon her head. Malia fell back into a dream.

  It was noon, when shadows were deep within each human, when mana was strongest. In Malia’s dream, Pono walked up the cliff bent backward in a gravity-defying way and stood over her, giving off a prehistoric lime-fossil smell. Yet human warmth emanated from her sand-sugared calves, her thighs and sunstruck shoulders.

  Malia sat up. That is, she watched herself sit up, the spiraling refractions of a dream. Pono held up the kimono Malia had given her with the face of the old woman.

  “Look closely, the pained face is erased. You can see tiny holes in the silk where stitches were. The unstitching will be cured by time.”

  Malia looked close, not understanding. In the kimono, the woman’s face was gone, as if digested. What was stitched there now was the back of her head, a slender neck, graceful as a geisha. She appeared to be gazing at the ocean. Such a simple landscape, it confused her.

  “What about Sunny’s nightmares?” she asked. “How will she go on?”

  Pono answered slowly, for she had suffered for this woman, stitched and restitched, until the history and future of Sunny Sung rang true.

  “Slow down! Time is not finished. It will have its say.”

  Malia slept again, and woke in the old plantation house, in a room of heavy liquid, nothing still. Sepia walls trembled as if the wood were feverish. She lay in a four-poster bed, feeling the glow of animate heat, feeling delivered into turbulence and throng. The room possessed a thousand tongues.

  Pono held up the same kimono, and Malia resumed the conversation as if she had fallen back into the dream.

  “What about the evil that left Sunny shattered?”

  The woman stared from a window at the sea. “There will be a reckoning.”

  “I saw her,” Malia whispered. “I was there. She told my dying mama everything. How can I help her? What should I do?”

  Pono slowly sat down before her with a face that lacked awe for anything. She seemed to have grown in stature, in knowing. Malia felt she was looking into a face from a petroglyph, that she was breathing in the skin of the ancients.

  “Listen now, Malia. You are going to help Sunny Sung in ways you cannot imagine. By letting the air become air. By not chaining each day, whipping each moment. By no longer running from emptiness to emptiness.”

  She sat up in the bed, as Pono leaned closer.

  “I had four daughters. They are gone. I had a husband, he is gone. That is, life won’t let me have him. I punished my daughters, wanting their father instead. I loved them with a love so strong I thought it was hate. I made terrible mistakes. Mistakes tell us who we are. . . .

  “Now all I have are dreams. And, now and then, a man that life keeps taking back, because he is ma‘i pk. I have wounded him deeply by driving our daughters away. By chaining each day, whipping each moment. By bitterness and pride. I have destroyed the seeds we sowed together. Maybe one day the daughters of these daughters will forgive me. If I am ready to be human.”

  She touched Malia’s hair, touched her cheek. She had never been this patient with another woman, except her friend and guardian, little Run Run.

  “Look at your life, Malia. It is empty. Pride keeps passion locked in the closet of your midnights.”

  “But, what has this to do with Sunny Sung?”

  “In your youth, you shunned her. She would have been a
precious friend.”

  “But I have swallowed pride. I have even given my daughter her father.” “You have half given. You hold yourself back from the father. And so, you will tear what binds you.”

  Pono rose to her full height. “I tell you now. Take your pride and swallow. Ingest it! And excrete. Take the ribs you cherish. Polish them with oils of determination. Ask him to forgive you. If you push this man away, you will lose father and daughter for all time. And I myself will damn you.”

  Malia shook her head. “I can’t. He humiliated me.”

  “Woman, you have lived! Did you think you could get through life with only scratches? That is not living. It’s hiding.”

  “Then I’ll hide. I don’t trust love. You open up to someone, and they kill you.”

  “Listen now. Every decision we make—to love, or not love—is a death. Love doesn’t kill or neuter. We do. We think too much. Talk too much. Feel, Malia, feel. We’re women of blasphemy and recklessness. Life makes us pay. So, you have paid. Now, pick your life up, piece by piece. Remember what I taught you. Look for matching patterns, connect the seams. Brilliant designs will emerge.”

  Pono’s voice softened. “Have you forgotten? The father of your child has suffered, too. Who knows what men suffer that they can’t express? There is such feeling still alive between you. Rare. It is so rare. I tell you, take him up again. Let life begin.”

  Malia struggled, wanting to tell, not able. How she had tried to be honorable. To care. To tend and feed those who had birthed her. And whom she had birthed.

  “I know everything,” Pono said. “Your parents lived with dignity because of you. They never had to beg. One day your girl will know. Her father will tell her by and by. Can you believe that even now she weeps, thinking you have gone away? Your bed is made. Your shop is closed. She begins to understand you are the best thing that is ever going to happen to her.

  “As for the father, he is tired, Malia, physically weary. He may not be as strong a lover as before. Nonetheless, he is a man of valor, fighting for our people. If you throw him away, you will walk the years a gutted woman. I tell you, be extravagant. Dare!”

  Malia thought again of Sunny Sung. “How can I help her? How can I undo the years I was too prideful?”

  “There is no need to do, or undo. The world changes us far more than we change the world. Just stand still. Things will unfold.”

  Malia lay thinking. When she spoke, her voice was sure.

  “Pono. My daughter is now a young woman. She has outgrown her ‘Baby’ name. I never blessed her with a birth-name. Her piko still lies wrapped in linens.”

  Pono smiled, anticipating her words.

  “I want to name her . . . Anahola. After Sunny and my brother’s child. My daughter’s blood flows in his veins. Keo is her father, too. He raised her. Perhaps she loves him most of all.”

  Pono took Malia’s hand. “See? You are already growing kind. This naming will give your brother joy. And you will touch the heart of what is left of Sunny Sung.”

  She rose, looked out at the sea again. “Anahola . . . time in a glass. She will be a restless woman. Always searching. She will belong to each of you. And no one.”

  Malia seemed to need to ask again. “What about the ones who mutilated Sunny?”

  “I told you. There will be a reckoning.”

  “And what about . . . Rabaul, where they imprisoned her. It still exists.”

  Pono’s voice grew pitiless. “It represents too much evil to exist. One day Pele will reclaim it.”

  Now, gently, as if Malia were a child, Pono tucked a sheet round her shoulders.

  “Rest. I have been generous today. Think deeply, Malia. Put down your whip. Let life begin.”

  A breeze like a shy, fragrant animal touched Malia’s face, stroking her to sleep.

  Drowsily she whispered, “Pono! When will my daughter forgive me?”

  Pono smiled. “When will you forgive yourself?”

  MAKA HAKAHAKA

  Sunken Eyes

  HE SAT UP WITH A TEARING SOUND. HE BENT AT THE WINDOW, struggling to remember where he was. Trying to still his shaking legs, he moved to a mirror. Each day he looked more blue, more frontal. He sat on a chair, touching his saxophone, all that was left that was real to him. He steeped tea; holding the pot with both hands, trying to pour. Hands so jumpy he could hardly hold his horn, hardly control his breathing.

  The only thing that calmed him now was walking through crowds. Studying necks. So few were desirable. Now and then one so perfect, so delectable, sweat stood up on his wrists. He felt a mild erection. Some days were pure disgust and hardship, crowds of imperfections. Zenzen dame necks, really terrible, yellow and brown slabs of fat. Or bamboo-clarinet necks, skinny stalks of bone. On such days he stumbled home, weak and famished.

  Now, huge crowds in the streets, imbecile chanting! Parades, banners, speeches. The city in a fever over statehood. Keo said Washington could pass the bill any week now. In the subsoil of his being, Endo felt disgust. Here were people with houses, families to love, food to eat. Yet in their greed, they wanted more. What did they know of need? Of suffering? What did they know of incinerated cities? Origins becoming ash . . . Mother! Father!

  He took walks in moonlight when Chinatown was quiet. He looked up at stars and tried to remember being normal. But then the feeling of being stalked, the smell of rust, of wet clay. One night, losing his way, he paused at a shop for directions. Under glaring lights, a butcher slammed his meat-ax pah! pah! pah! Thirteen duck heads in a row. Bodies jerking and flapping. Endo stared at the pyramid of heads and screamed. The man wiped his hands and pushed him from his shop.

  Maybe he imagined it. The only time he didn’t feel stalked by the smell of wet clay was when he was with Keo. As if Keo were a shield, a thing that held the smell at bay. At the Swing Club, Endo’s playing was reduced to mostly miming. He didn’t solo anymore. Still, he came each night, and held his saxophone and studiously listened. Music was all he had left. His dread was the day his senses blurred, when jazz became for him just noise.

  Increasingly, his vision wavered, the sun was crucifying. He wandered Chinatown in round sunglasses that, with his blue skin, brought to mind a large, fabled fly. Chemicals of lead were in ascendence, ravaging his nervous system. Food went down, and came back up harsh-colored. His limbs shot out independently. He had convulsions. Shopkeepers kept pencils ready so he wouldn’t bite his tongue off. They scolded children who stared.

  One day he stopped in a tea shop where it was dark and cool, tasseled lampshades, daily newspapers draped over bamboo rods. He drank tea through a straw, read papers by laying them flat on a table so his hands would not rattle them. Around the shop, through faint gyres of dust, people sipped from porcelain cups and read. Someone entered the shop behind him. In the sweltering day, he suddenly felt chilled, as if little hands had touched his spine. At a far table, an old woman with a cane and ugly orthopedic shoes sat and ordered jasmine tea.

  For a time it was silent, the shop removed from noisy streets, occasional coughs stirring the dust. A child came to the doorway, hawking dried Java plums. The owner gently shooed her away. He smiled, his teeth big yellow tusks, and stared at Endo’s skin, refilling his teapot. Across the room, a weathered hand shifted a cane.

  Every thirty seconds, a neon sign outside the window tinted Endo pink. His intermittent glowing outraged a macaw in a rusty cage hanging from the ceiling. Maybe it reminded the bird of watercolored jungles of its origins, wings outspread in freedom. It started a commotion, scattering seeds, upsetting its water dish, its cage soaring back and forth like a pendulum.

  Customers looked up, then went back to their papers. Water from the birdcage dripped to the floor beside Sunny’s cane. She felt a drop against her ankle. She sipped her tea, her movements small and measured. But something in her gestures changed the air, the elements. The bird grew still. Across the room, Endo dropped his head and moaned, a blue man intermittently pulsing pink. He felt an odor ri
se up in the shop—rustlike smell of wet red clay.

  People gathered, wondering how to calm him. His screams set off the bird again. His body shook and jerked. Someone offered a pencil for his tongue. He tried to explain it wasn’t convulsions, it was the odor driving him crazy. Couldn’t they smell it? Then it came closer. It put its hand on his shoulder. It leaned on its cane. Endo leapt up, reeling from the shop.

  Beside him, remembrance, like a running ghoul.

  . . . Miles of chambers carved from clay. Chambers for starvation. For suffocation. Chambers full of malarial mosquitoes, whining and relentless. Like kamikazes flying to their deaths. Millions of young boys sacrificed . . .

  He ran out into traffic. “THE EMPEROR HAS ORDERED THIS!”

  AS HIS FRIEND SLOWLY DECLINED, KEO SPENT MORE TIME WITH him, watching him drink through a straw, eat from his plate like a dog, no longer trusting his hands with forks and knives. Week by week, his skin grew bluer. His eyes receded into deep, dark throats. Keo began to think of his skull as something scholars dipped their pens in.

  “We’ve got to find you a specialist.”

  Endo shook his head. “I told you. I will not end up a microbe, a thing under glass to pinch and probe.”

  “But, look. You’re getting worse.”

  “I’m not getting worse. I’m dying.”

  He studied Keo, even his neck, a good neck. He felt great affection for him. “Don’t be sad. I’ve lived enough. You’ve been a good friend. You have humored me.”

  Then he really looked at Keo, eye to eye. “You’re a first-class trumpeter. The real McCoy. I wish you the recognition you deserve.”

  Keo looked off, embarrassed. “I don’t think about that now. Those dreams are past. So much going on here, we need so much. One day Krash told me I had lost touch, my music lacked the cry of our people. Supporting them seems more important now than recognition.”

  Endo sighed. “There are always voices crying out.”

  “Maybe. I only know I had muscles, and nerves, that were dead for years. Now they ache, they tingle. I feel alive. Teaching kids, I feel connected. When Mama died, I saw life speeding up, our elders starting to fade away. We were the new generation of elders. But I was still living in the past, the present zipping right by me. I’ve lost the need for certain things. Even the need to travel.”