The Queen of Tears

by Chris Mckinney

  He thought about that first night as he and Brandon coasted on the freeway, heading for the Pali. Brandon stuck his head out of the window like a dog and smiled as the wind tossed his hair. It was a strong wind that shimmied his cheeks. He hadn’t said anything since they’d left. But Brandon’s quietness never bothered Kaipo; in fact, he liked it.

  Brandon had been the only quiet one that night at the Hawaiian Canoe Club. He’d barely even noticed Kaipo, it seemed, and immediately Kaipo knew why he was so quiet. Brandon didn’t have anything to say to these people. He was a foreigner, too. So Kaipo liked him, and decided to sit there quietly, too, until Darian started to talk to him.

  Darian. She was a sweet kid. Full of ideas and long, not necessarily big, words. Always reading books, talking about how there was so much reality and truth in ink and paper. At least her fake world wasn’t made out of green paper. At first, after he’d gotten the phone call from his sister offering part-time work, which he’d known would make his PO happy, he thought that he’d just be in and out of there on weekends. Then Darian came on to him, and he figured, why not? She was good-looking. He wasn’t stupid.

  But something funny happened. He didn’t fall in love or anything like that; he thought of it more along the lines of flea infestation. You bring a dog into your house; you’re not only bringing in the dog, you’re bringing in all of the fleas attached to the dog, too. But he liked them. He liked Darian, Won Ju, and the kid; besides, they weren’t messy. They didn’t mess with his ghost mother, who had been a transparent spectre in that house as long as he could remember, either, so he saw no reason to put a flea collar on Darian. Besides, the entire family amused him, and it seemed like he had his own little flea circus.

  “So what? Rough day, yestaday?” he asked.

  Brandon pulled his head away from the window. “Nah. Where was everybody, anyway?”

  “I took your madda fo’ meet your grandmadda. Den I took your madda fo’ meet your fadda. I tink Darian and your grandmadda went work wit’ your uncle.”

  “You’re like a taxi. They don’t piss you off?”

  “Nah. Whatevas.”

  “Yeah.”

  They took the Pali Highway cutoff. The ascent up the Ko‘olau Mountains sloped up gradually, unlike the descent, which would consist of steep drops and a notorious hairpin turn. To both the left and right there was foliage so thick that the ground seemed to consist of tops of trees. Far to the right, the mountains were veined with the faint white lines of waterfalls from the heavy morning showers. Though the news had said nothing about a hurricane or tropical storm, Kaipo sensed something coming. The sun seemed to be fighting with the clouds over whether there would be rain or shine. A vortex of air blew through the open window, into the cab of the truck, twirling old receipts, empty cigarette packs, crumpled gum foils, and loose clothing. “Roll up da window. I tink going storm.”

  Brandon obeyed. As they traveled further up, a sunny drizzle started. “Only in Hawaii, can be sunny and rainy at da same time.”

  Brandon didn’t say anything. He was staring out the window. Just then, it seemed as if someone dumped a bucket of water on the windshield. It poured heavily for just a few seconds, then the rain completely stopped, and the sun shone strongly. The wind was getting more and more powerful. Leaves were being ripped from their branches.

  As they neared the top, the tunnels, Brandon cleared his throat, then looked at Kaipo excitedly. “Hey, Kaipo, let’s check out the Lookout.”

  “What if we late?”

  “Just for a few minutes. Look how strong the wind is.”

  The windshield wipers were vibrating. A weak drizzle started again. “Nah, raining.”

  “It’s only drizzling.”

  “O.K., O.K. We go.”

  Kaipo took the Pali Lookout cut-off. There were tour buses and rental cars in the parking lot. Both Japanese and haole tourists were walking toward the Lookout point, toting cameras and children. Charges of wind rippled through their clothes and hair as they leaned forward against the wind. The tourists with children began turning back. “Must be one good day,” Kaipo said.

  They got out of the truck. Kaipo looked up. He could see that it was raining, but raindrops were not hitting them. The wind was blowing the water back up, creating a cloud mist suspended a couple of stories above their heads. It was the first time Kaipo saw anything like this. The wind at the Pali Lookout was almost always strong, because it was a small gap at the top of the mountain range, much like a gap between two front teeth constantly causing whistling, but he never saw the wind stop rain before.

  They walked past the defeated tourists. As they neared the cement railing, Kaipo had to lean more and more forward to move through the whistling wind. Brandon walked beside him, smiling as he squinted. A faint trail of tears was streaming toward his temples. They walked down the old cement stairs. More and more tourists passed them, complaining about the strength of the wind. Some children were crying. Some had scraped knees. Kaipo was amazed at how much effort he had to put into the last several paces to the edge of the cliff.

  By the time Kaipo and Brandon reached the cement railing, and held on to the top of three horizontal safety bars above it, they were the only ones left. The sun was winning its fight with the clouds, but Kaipo could not tell if it was hot or cold. The sun rays warmed him, while the wind chilled his skin.

  Over the railing, right below the cliff, was a thick canopy about a hundred feet below. Beyond the canopy, further out and down, was a golf course. Beyond that, Kaipo could see an ant line of cars on Kamehameha Highway, all of the suburbs of Kaneohe town, and Kaneohe Bay. The Bay was a mixture of warm, shallow, coral-reef greens and deep, cold-channel blues. Coconut Island was there. Kaipo pointed to it. “That’s Gilligan’s Island,” he said.

  The wind made his voice practically inaudible. Brandon seemed not to hear him. He tapped Brandon on the shoulder. “We betta go,” he said.

  Brandon smiled. “How many leaves to you think are down there on all those trees?”

  Kaipo looked down. From that angle, the trees looked as if they were made entirely of leaves. “Billions,” he said.

  More tears streamed toward Brandon’s temples. They looked like transparent crow’s feet. “They all look the same, don’t they?”

  Kaipo looked down again. He supposed Brandon was right. “We so high, dat’s why.”

  “My science teacher told me, you know, about all that genetic research and stuff. He told me all human beings were ninety-nine-point-nine percent like each other.”

  After he finished talking, Brandon quickly climbed up on the railing. He straddled the top bar, holding on to it with one hand, like he was riding a bull. Kaipo grabbed his leg. “What da fuck you doing?”

  Brandon smiled. “I’m tired. Flying or sinking.”

  Kaipo wasn’t sure if he’d let go. He never would remember if he did or not. He didn’t think the boy was strong enough to break his grip, but who knew? Brandon was determined. Maybe he wanted to see it; maybe he’d figured that it was Brandon’s life, but he couldn’t remember letting go. What he would never forget, though, was the image of Brandon being levitated by the wind. For a moment, it was as if God was under Brandon, and He pursed his giant God lips and gently blew. Brandon looked like a mullet jumping out of a glassy pool of brackish water in slow motion. He wore the sun as a halo for a second, smiling ten feet above Kaipo. He was a stained-glass window. Kaipo remembered that smile, that glorious smile that was brighter than the sun itself for that split second, right before he crashed toward the canopy like an ill-constructed paper airplane. God inhaled, but Kaipo would never forget that victorious, angel-for-a-second smile that outshone the sun. Just like the moment before a wave rolls and consumes itself on a stormy day, the moment of death can be so beautiful, and like the mullet jumping from the pool, or the marbled, misty breaker, it often goes unnoticed.

  -6-

  The nameless, egg-shaped man. Soong remembered Henry had mentioned him at least thir
ty times. The nameless, egg-shaped man had gone through basic training with Henry. Actually, it wasn’t that he’d completed or somehow graduated from basic training, but it was World War II, and like in all wars, the armies need bodies, so corners were cut. Henry’d said, “We all knew. We all knew from the start that this guy wasn’t going to make it. He couldn’t do a pull-up, much less a push-up, and his running was even worse. I’d look at him most often in disgust, but sometimes with pity. Because when I looked at him, I think he knew he wasn’t going to make it, too.”

  Soong had often wondered why Henry would always talk about the weak and unlucky men he’d served with. He seemed never to talk about the ones who won medals or saved lives. But now, she thought that maybe he was trying to pass on some wisdom to her. Maybe he was saying that it’s a fact that the weak perish and so do the strong sometimes, because of bad luck. Maybe he was saying that this is so, and there’s nothing anybody can do about it. The nameless, egg-shaped man indeed perished on that first day, and as Henry said, probably within the first few steps he took on the Old World. “What happens when you roll an egg down a hill with rough terrain?”

  Had Brandon been an egg or unlucky? Soong asked herself as she sat alone in her aisle, onboard the still Korean Airlines DC-10 in front of Gate 42. It could be considered that bad luck, that one moment where Crystal had been allowed to stay at Won Ju’s home, a simple decision, doomed them. But even then, it wasn’t luck, was it? Crystal wasn’t a mortar that made heads disappear, was she? No, even though she’d considered Chung Yun as the egg all these years, it was indeed Brandon. She supposed all people were eggs; the raw ones were the weak ones, and the boiled ones were strong. Brandon had been a raw egg, an egg carefully coddled by layers and layers of tissue. Tissue. What has tissue ever protected? Tissue does not protect; it cleans.

  The legacy of her family that started with an orphan girl named Kwang Ja, the matriarch, was ending. Won Ju and Chung Yun would not have children. Whatever Darian would give birth to would be the start of a new, American line. And Crystal had vanished. Despite the desperate searches conducted by Kenny to find her, or more specifically, his grandson, she was gone. Soong knew well the advantages of letting go of your name. There could be new beginnings, and since Crystal had changed it once before, why not again, and someplace else? Soong had been over-boiled. As she thought of the end of the family she started cracking without moisture.

  Chung Yun would go on. Won Ju had become like that ghost woman who lived in Kaipo’s house after Brandon died, except she haunted canned-vegetable aisles. Kenny continued on his search for Crystal, at the same time doing everything in his power to convince himself and anyone else that Kaipo had murdered his son, tossed him off the cliff at the Pali Lookout, even though Kaipo was the one who’d contacted the police before he’d even contacted family. But Kenny had the ears of powerful people, so nevertheless, Kaipo sat in jail awaiting trial. Darian had flown back to California where, Soong figured, she belonged. And here she was, on her way to Korea, to sell her artifacts to a museum, including the silver knife. What was hers belonged in a museum. She did not understand this world, and her artifacts proved useless. She would die in Korea.

  The plane began taxiing down the runway. Soong thought about reincarnation and wished it were so. She wanted another chance. She still wasn’t quite sure what she’d done wrong, but she hoped with no delusion that she could have another opportunity. But she knew that hope without delusion was not hope at all. Suddenly, she remembered that fortuneteller years ago, the one who had renamed her. She thought she had been properly skeptical. But perhaps she was not. Perhaps a part of her believed that her new name was a lucky one, because she had hope. She had hopes for her family. She felt like she had been duped, which, she supposed, hope often does.

  The plane stopped on the runway. The engines wound loudly. The wings of the plane shook. The flight attendants appeared, going over the safety tips and instructions on what to do if the plane were to drop out of the sky thirty thousand feet high. Had she been crying? Her body convulsed. She wiped her face with her fingers. There were no tears. Suddenly, she felt sick. She grabbed for the bag in front of her and vomited into it.

  The plane raced down the runway, then slowly lifted. Soong vomited again. As the plane ascended, Soong experienced a series of dry heaves that sent tears rolling down the sides of her face. She could not stop.