He was dying upward. His legs were stone: angel’s trumpet blowing deadly juices. He could barely move his arms.
Sunny climbed to a slight rise up against the tunnel wall. What she was waiting for began to dawn on him. Horrified, he screamed, he thought he screamed, but something else came out instead. Currents rose, deep enough to float him. They swayed his body side to side. He screamed again, tried to grasp the walls with dying arms.
Rapids suddenly rushed in, spinning his body, floating his face up close to hers, a blue and gruesome, grinning mask. His cries almost mortal in their anguish. Then rapids shot his body forward, so the living brain of Endo Matsuharu saw the ocean waiting in the distance. Red, and boiling, and patient.
ANOTHER DAY PASSED. RAINS SLOWLY SUBSIDED. AN OLD WOMAN stepped from a tunnel, muddy and steaming. She squatted, eating a few blades of grass, so fresh and crisp, she smacked her lips. She held her face up to the rain. Holding on to banyan roots breaking the earth like organ pipes, she climbed slowly up the embankment. Now and then she paused, resting her head against a tree. She breathed in deeply. The bark smelled clean, and earth smelled clean.
‘NANA
Life, Anew
IN JUNE 1959 STATEHOOD WAS VOTED IN, AND IN JULY A NATIVE Hawai‘ian became the first elected lieutenant governor. On that day folks stepped out prideful, but in years to come they would retreat back into silence, the argot of the poor, the invisible. In August Hawai‘i was officially made the fiftieth state of the Union, and for a short, euphoric time local politicians kept their promises.
Electric saws felled rotted trees lining the streets of Kalihi. With morbid haste the lane seemed to suddenly breathe and expand. Workmen came with vats of boiling pitch and trucks of gravel, and folks tiptoed down narrow planks beside bitter, carbon-smelling tar. Keo was shocked by the sudden sky, missing the canopied ceiling of palms and giant ferns that kept them hidden from the world.
Now the lane stood out black and straight as a boar’s hair. Suddenly families owned cars, great shining scarabs whose flashes of chrome snatched children’s shapes as they passed. Overnight the slack-key rhythms of strolling couples disappeared. Now folks sat out in their cars between faded bungalows, encamped there through the evenings, drinking, “talking story.”
And with the alchemy of time, a faster pace of living, neighbors no longer leaned at fences recording the ebb and flow of the Meahuna family. They had no time to gossip about Timoteo and Kiko Shirashi, the elegant mortician’s widow, and how he dragged home at all hours. They hardly noticed when he collided with that politician, Krash Kapakahi, grappling with his trousers in the lane at dawn.
Each night in front of flickering TVs, foreign faces leapt into their living rooms, blasting them with such strange communiqués. Folks sat stunned, losing track of funerals, marriages, baby l‘au. And because each generation seemed more independent and outspoken, folks would not think it strange when Baby Jo shed her kid-name for Anahola. Or when, after university, she would choose not medical or law school but a freighter, taking off into the world. Living for two, she would say, living out her mama’s dreams.
Neighbors were so preoccupied, they would hardly notice when she came home every other year, crashing up the lane, because next week there would be another son or daughter coming home, dragging luggage, a degree, a wife or husband from the mainland. Elders would lose track of which child was at university and which was backpacking in Honshu, Fujian, the Azores, tracking down ancestral roots.
The Territorial years were gone, and folks paid less attention to the comings and goings of Keo, still charioting the sea with his trumpet, still playing his midnight piano. Some nights he sat with Anahola, laughing, talking his head off. Other nights, neighbors thought they saw him talking to an empty chair. No one was shocked. The world was now so huikau, confusing, a lot of folks sat up all night arguing with their shadows, shaking their poi fingers at the moon.
One night, as Keo sat musing over the dissonance and pacing of a piano composition, someone swaggered up the lane.
“Hula Man. Howzit! Long time no see.” Oogh stood there in a cowboy hat, little boots, and Levi’s.
“Oh, my God.” Keo stood up, laughing. “Don’t tell me you’re a paniolo now!”
Oogh strolled into the garage and climbed up on a chair, hugging Keo. “Nah, nah. This outfit just fo’ show. Selling tickets at rodeo over Wahiawa way. Mon ami, I hear you doing real good things. Teaching serious kine music to students.”
Keo dipped into a cooler, pulled out two beers.
“Well, it kind of happened with the statehood thing. Krash got me started. You know, teaching kids excites me. Keeps me on my toes.”
The little man removed his hat and gazed up at his friend. “Meanwhile, you still one dynamite horn man.”
“I still blow. But jazz is fading, Oogh. Most of my gigs are backup on piano. Look, I want to hear about you.”
He sipped his beer, banged the pointed toes of his boots together. “I got one real dream job, Keo. Traveling wit’ rodeo boys. Dey like my style, put me in one kiosk, selling tickets to da crowds.”
Keo shook his head impatiently. “When are you going to get a job to match the superior brain God gave you?”
“’Ey! One t’ing you fo’get,” Oogh said. “I always wanted folks looking up at me, remembah? Like one judge. Inducing anxiety wit’ his gavel!”
He stood up, pantomiming, explaining the dramaturgy of intimidating.
“Dis job, see, I sit on one high stool inside kiosk, look like I seven feet tall! Folks drive up, got to look up at me. I tell ’em, ‘OK, ROOM FO’ YOU FOLKS.’ Or ‘SORRY! ALL FULL UP.’ Dey start to beg! Sometime I give da stink eye, check out how many folks stuffed in backseat, even in da trunk. Den I tell ’em, ‘’EY! YOU PAY TWENNY DOLLAH EXTRA, TOO MANY FOLKS IN DAT ONE CAR.’ Sometimes I tease ’em, ‘NO PAY, I T’ROW YOU IN DA BULL PEN.’ Ooh, funny, der expressions! Keo, you gotta come see me work. All height, and authority. Da best!”
Keo laughed, shaking his head. “I promise. Now, tell me, how’s your papa?”
Oogh slipped from Pidgin to English, his voice grew soft and thoughtful.
“Papa. What a guy! He’s teaching me net-making, poi-pounding. How to listen when gourds call. When certain winds blow through empty gourds, means it’s deep-sea-fishing time. And, too, he’s teaching me our secret wandering stars, Following-the-Chief Star, Red Star, Dripping-Water Star, and what their journeys mean.”
“And what are you doing in return?”
Oogh looked up and smiled. “One day he saw me writing a letter to ma mère in Shanghai. Papa began to cry. He told me their story. She came here a picture bride, already sold to another man. But when the ship docked, all she saw in the crowd was Papa’s big brown shoulders, his golden cheeks and taro-tough teeth. They didn’t speak each other’s language. But when he put his hand out, she placed hers there, and when he left the crowd, she followed. . . .
“They loved each other very much. But, in time, she ran away, shanghaied me back to China. Why? Because she was greedy, wanting more than to be a country wife. And he was too proud to learn to read or write. That is what I teach my papa. Reading. Writing. Even a soupçon of French. Maybe I will make him a taro-farmer scholar! He is making me his kua‘ina son—real country-jack.”
Keo shook his head. “You’re amazing. Even standing still, you find adventures.”
“This one is the most exciting,” Oogh said. “Family. Mystery. Unriddling. I love this kanaka more than life. He is even teaching me to love ma mère, that old profiteering goat!”
Keo threw back his head and roared. Across the way, Noah Palama, the twelve-fingered neighbor, looked out of his bedroom window. Keo seemed to be talking to a hat.
Oogh sat up importantly. “Also, I am learning to play gourd drum, and bamboo nose-flute.”
“ ’Ey. You may end up more kanaka than me.”
“I think never, mon ami. You are more Hawai‘ian than you know. In the end, we are what we
were intended to be.”
Oogh smiled again, thinking of his mother.
“Now I help Papa write letters to ma mère. He is still kanaka proud, but in a better way. I know they cannot go back in time, but maybe they are building something new. I think there is a bit of Wai‘anae budding in Shanghai, and in the taro fields of Wai‘anae, there is the laughter of a too-young girl whose papa sold her for a pot of tea. . . .
“She is still cunning. But I see tearstains in letters from Shanghai. I see Papa cry when I read them to him. I put the letter down, blow puffs of air like kisses, drying his tears. When cheeks are wet, air kisses feel cool. He shivers and we giggle. He says ma mère used to blow air kisses, too. Who knows? Maybe I am a bridge reconnecting them. Papa’s emotions, Mama’s drive.”
Keo leaned forward. “Oogh, I believe you’re growing sentimental.”
“Ah, yes. Maybe we are all dwarfs, the sentimentals of the world. I am learning how good it is to feel, to not be always cynical and clever. I have even outrun my nightmares. Of waking up caged, someone’s souvenir. Papa also teaches me how good it is to be alone. There is so much of life we live, but never examine. For that we need solitude. To quietly fill it with ourselves.
“But there is more! It is not all whatchoo call it—bed of roses. Ma mère is still a profiteering goat, oh yes! Her letters are tear-stained, but they are also demanding. Send this, send that. Cartons of cigarettes. Jack Daniels. In return she sends us garbage. Empty chocolate boxes from before the war, filled with crumbling, bloodstained crochet. What are we to do with that? Probably dug up from her bombed-out brothels. A filthy placemat from the old Cathay. Dead singing-crickets. My God! While she still sweeps around in silks and jades.
“So? Papa and I conspired. We collected giant centipedes, four, five inches long. We sent them AIR MAIL. Two dozen ugly, poisonous devils. You have to love her, to admire her. Now living in Communist Shanghai, but still mercantile as a pharaoh. What did she do? Was she insulted? No!
“She dried the centipedes, painted and lacquered them. Fashioned them as beautiful objets to be worn. Brooches, bracelets, charms. She sold them for enormous sums. Now she is sending us huge orders, for more and more boxes of . . . yes, centipedes! Ah, what you can do? Even Papa says, and with great pride, she is still one akamai, very smart, wahine!”
Oogh looked down, somewhat shy. “Hula Man, without you I might never have reclaimed my birthsands. You were trying to come home and, helping you, I found my way. I’m only sorry that it took a war.”
Keo sighed, thinking of the losses. “A Gypsy friend believed the human race was squalid, start to finish. He said it was war that made us human. It made people kinder, more thoughtful.”
“And you, mon ami? Were you kind?”
“A little. For a while.”
Oogh shook his arm. “My God, don’t talk as if it’s over! We’re still youngsters, hardly fifty. Why, it takes fifty years just to step back and get a running start.”
Keo slowly shook his head. “I don’t think—”
“ ’Ey! Don’t think yourself to death. Relax, let life age you to perfection. There will be epiphanies, moments that will make you gasp with beauty. And there will be the slow drip of the quotidian. Let it come. Throw your arms wide. Now and then there will even be a woman who will look your way. Blow your trumpet for her.”
“Sometimes I think blowing is just a way of screaming for help.”
“Hula Man. When you want to scream, be still. Be still. Deep within you is a place where everything’s all right. As for your music . . . it articulates life. Makes it bearable.”
He tapped Keo’s arm. “And you must pay attention to Anahola. Like your sweetheart, Sun-ja, she will always be searching, driven to extremes. Perhaps it was those fatherless years. She will hurt herself time and again, living by the intuition of the instant, flying blindly into the frozen heart of things.”
“She has parents now. She’ll go to them.”
“Never! She’s too proud. And it may be she loves you most of all. One day, you will save her life. Is that not something to live for?”
Keo looked down. “It’s strange. Each time I’m with her, I’m struck by . . . similarities. She’s so much like Sunny, it’s like Sunny’s come back to me.”
Oogh nodded thoughtfully. “There are so many voices we never hear. So many meanings we never get. Perhaps we are all lost, and found, and lost again. Perhaps only amazement keeps us alive.”
He checked his watch and jumped up, hugging Keo.
“Come see me at the rodeo. And, Hula Man, be ikaika, strong. Remember, after everything, there is still ‘ohana, family. And all this!”
He flung his hand out at the night, then dashed down the lane, singing out, “Hi‘ipoi ka ‘ina aloha!” Cherish the beloved land.
Twelve-fingered Noah Palama sat up in his bed again, peering out the window. He saw what looked like a miniature cowboy running by, a little singing buckaroo. Or maybe he was dreaming.
HA ‘ INA MAI KA PUANA
Let the Story Be Told
SOME DAYS THE OCEAN COMES TO GET HIM, WAVES SO WHIPPED and frenzied, he can hardly hear his horn. On such days he still “feels” notes through vibrations of his fingers, as if he were a deaf man. Today the sea is calm. He feels a gentle rocking as waves inhale, exhale. Moist air lifts his skin, so he looks luminous. He has a sense of well-being, a sense that, though things are missing in his life, what he has might be enough.
He lifts his trumpet, presses it to damp, scarred lips, and quietly approaches the “Nessun dorma” aria from Turandot. He plays it slowly, with consideration, as if mining the aphorisms and crystallized griefs of his life. In quiet exaltation, he blows like a man seeing the world through a mind gone sane. Almost dignified, restrained. But there’s still something wild and haunted in his playing. Something that, long ago, was almost touched by genius.
From the beach, in the shade of ancient palms, an old woman watches and remembers. Once, in Paris, they listened to Puccini’s opera while a Gypsy told the story of Turandot, how in legendary times in Peking, a prince won the hand of a haughty princess by naming the three enigmas, Hope, Blood, Love. Keo had vowed one day he would play the aria to perfection.
The old woman suspects he no longer seeks that perfection. Now he comes to the aria out of habit, like a man sitting down with a comforting friend. At the end, he lingers, then lowers his horn. She sees his shoulders slumped in meditation, allowing the aria to reverberate within him. Then he brings the trumpet to his lips again, trying to capture the sweet, intricate patterns of an old Hawai‘ian song.
She wipes her forehead. It has been hot and dry for weeks. Fields are scorched distempered brown, and in the pali of the Ko‘olaus, even waterfalls are still. The heat has kept her sleepless. Everywhere a brittle sound—clattering palms, stones cracking in sun, the crepitation of large insects like humans opening leather wings.
Now, listening to Keo play, she feels mist gather that will turn to gentle rains. Rains that will mature to torrents, quieting everything. All will be forced to lie still and listen. For soon they will enter island autumn, a kk slung between two seasons. Then the ‘iwa bird will fly. Clouds will walk the coast like royalty. The sea will deepen, land will soften. Winter will bring hurricanes.
She feels she could sleep forever. She rouses herself and heads to her jade hare room, passing a pond where brilliant-patterned carp, like loaves of brocade, rise to the surface. Long nights are waiting, and dreams. Some will be unbearable. But there will be other dreams to salvage her.
Healing hands of the mothers of her mother, ancient mele chanters and tale weavers chorusing in Mother Tongue. They will gently bathe her, soothing her bones. They will rinse her hollows. Swaying on the ocean floor, they will turn, passing her nightmares from hand to hand like heirlooms. Her pain will be made bearable; they will bear it with her.
Listening closely in those dreams, she will hear her mother’s mother and that woman’s mother, chant out how Sunny
Sung became a woman, how she exacted ho‘opa‘i, revenge. And broken girls, that army of women in her blood, will rise beside the elders. In nights of sleeplessness, they will keep watch, turning the darkness womanful.
One day, when winter rains are pau, she will wake and see the greening all around her. The green veil of rootless plankton, like marine pastures on the face of the sea. Green jewels permeating fields and uplands, feeding them oxygen. The bronzed, verdant haze on rock and sand. The indelible green of her islands. She had seen it in her youth, yet not seen it. Now it will leap up in her second sight. And in that reborn greening, she will take up her cane again, following him at a distance.
She will see him with Anahola, once called Baby Jo. How quietly he will sit, telling her the history of Sunny Sung. Telling of his infant daughter, never held. She will see Anahola weeping in her hands. Her story will be Anahola’s burden, and redemption: after this, she will always look behind her. She will draw closer to her uncle, watching over him. Time will be their prism.
On the Big Island, Island of Volcanoes, Pono will slowly unstitch a worn kimono, erasing the old woman. There will be nothing left but surrender. Life letting go with forgetful hands.
. . . ONE NIGHT SHE HEARS THEM CALLING, E HO‘I MAI! E HO‘I Mai! Come back. Come back. Women massing like weather. Women whose scars are radiant with light. They come for her—Lili, with her clubfoot shriveled and intent, and little Kim, her wrists and ribs like branches. They stand beside her sleeping form and take her hand. She rises like mist. They pass through walls like groves of talking jade-grass, and for a moment jade hares turn and stare.
They lead her to the uplands, following footsteps of the ancients, so she will see, and always remember, how her island is stored like a morsel in a great wet cheek. Rising higher and higher, they pass ironwood and cypress, then the fog zone where eucalyptus envelops her. Trees yawn and sway, containing all the tremors of the island which have absorbed for eons all the tremors of the sea.
Song of the Exile Page 38