Mahu

by Neil S. Plakcy

  I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to call anyone, not even Harry, who was the only person so far who had taken my news well. My head was throbbing and my throat was dry and I wanted to cry but couldn’t make the tears come. I took a couple of Tylenol P.M. and lay back down on the bed, and eventually I dozed off.

  I slept fitfully, with half-waking dreams of hounding newsmen and disapproving policemen. I was trying to get to the beach, and they lined Lili‘uokalani Street like a gauntlet, yelling at me, refusing to make eye contact, saying things like “You’ll never be a cop again, Kimo. Who are you, now that you’re not a cop?”

  When I woke up it was dark and I felt woozy. There was someone banging on my door. “Goddamn it, go away!” I yelled, and tried to bury my head under the pillows. I knew there had to be a law against the press harassing you. They wouldn’t stop, though, and finally I had to get up and go to the door. I didn’t even bother to look through the peephole, despite all the times I’d asked crime victims, “How come you didn’t look before you opened the door?”

  “No comment!” I yelled, opening the door. Staring back at me was my father.

  “Finally!” he said. Automatically I stepped back to let him in. My mother was just behind him. She took the door from me and closed it.

  I just looked at them. They were the last people I’d expected to see at my doorstep and I didn’t know what to say. Then, finally, the tears I’d been trying to cry all day came, and my legs got weak and I had to sit down.

  “We saw on the news,” my mother said, rubbing her hand across my shoulders.

  I was embarrassed and ashamed. I tried to wipe away my tears and succeeded only in dragging wet streaks across my face. My mother gave me a tissue and I blew my nose.

  “They are terrible,” my father finally said. “Those reporters. I told that one, from Lui’s station, my son is your boss. Go away. He wouldn’t. I told him I would call Lui and have him fired if he didn’t leave us alone, and he laughed.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I didn’t want this to happen.”

  My father paced back and forth in the small room, and my mother and I squeezed back into the corners to get out of his way. “This cannot be happening,” he said. “I did not raise my son to be a māhū. You must go back to the police and tell them they’re wrong. We’ll call your brother, he can bring a camera crew over to take your statement.”

  “They aren’t wrong,” I said. “It’s true.” I swallowed. “I’m gay. I’m sorry it happened this way, but I can’t change who I am.”

  “How can this be?” my father asked. “We didn’t raise you this way. You were a normal boy. A little quiet, sometimes. Maybe we let your brothers tease you a little too much. But you’ve had girlfriends. Many girlfriends. Why have you changed?”

  “I haven’t changed. I’ve always been this way. I just haven’t had the courage to face it until now.”

  “I wish you were still a coward,” my father said.

  “Al, that’s enough,” my mother said. “Kimo, you must pack now.”

  “Pack?”

  “We want you to come home with us for a while,” she said. “These reporters outside. You’re upset. You should come to us.”

  “I can’t. I would just bring more of my troubles down on your heads.”

  My father walked over and opened my closet door. “Here are some shirts,” he said. “Lokelani, find the suitcase.”

  “No,” I said.

  I stood up, and my father glared at me. “You don’t know what’s best for you right now. We do. You’re coming home with us.”

  I felt as if all my will power had drained from me. Too much had happened to me in too short a time, and I couldn’t process it anymore. I said, “My suitcase is on the top shelf, in the back. I’ll pack it.”

  “Good,” my father said. “Do you have any brandy?”

  I nodded toward the kitchen. “In the cabinet over the sink.”

  While I packed my suitcase, my father poured brandy into juice glasses for the three of us. When I was finished we lifted our glasses together and my mother said, “You are our son, and you always will be. We love you.”

  My father drank his brandy in one shot, and so did I.

  YOU CAN GO HOME AGAIN

  I randomly picked out aloha shirts and polos, shorts and khakis, and bathing suits I would probably not get to wear to the beach. I took my uniform, and the one suit I owned, a simple navy one that served for funerals and weddings and family command performances.

  I scooped a haphazard pile of books I hadn’t yet read into a knapsack, and placed it by the door with my short board and my long board. I always carried extra books with me when I traveled, afraid of landing in some distant place without something to read. What else to take? My roller blades? The half-eaten box of chocolate-covered Oreos from the kitchen? My pocket knife, camera, a deck of playing cards for solitaire? I took them all, without discrimination. By the time I was finished there were four bags by the door along with a pile of sporting equipment.

  “I’m ready,” I said finally.

  My mother went around the room, turning off lights, checking the windows and the burners on the stove. “The reporters will still be there,” she said.

  I took a look around my apartment. It was only one big room, with the kitchen off to the side, but it was my home, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to leave it, even though I knew it would be easier to stay at my parents’ house, where at least I could move from room to room, talk to people when I wanted to, even sneak out into the backyard when I wanted to feel the sun and the wind.

  Iacta ilea est, I remembered from some long ago history class. The die is cast. I slung my knapsack over my back, put my boards under one arm and grabbed my roller blades with the other. “I’m ready to go,” I said, and walked out into the glare of flashbulbs.

  My mother drove us home in her Lexus, and I knew the TV crews would find us soon enough. It was just sunset and the day had turned beautiful, as it often does on this island of microclimates. You could start in Honolulu, head Diamond Head and beyond, to the windward shore, travel along the coast as far as Laie, land of Mormons, ride along the North Shore, then head back through the central valley and pass a dozen different types of weather along the way. Stay in one place, and the weather changed around you, often gorgeous, but with passing showers, winds, and clouds alternating with brilliant sunshine.

  If I hadn’t been dogged by reporters, I might have spent the afternoon at the beach. The morning clouds and rain would have brought stronger waves; I remember often waking, when I was surfing in earnest, hoping the morning would bring rough weather and with it rough surf, and being disappointed at another gorgeous day.

  The weather seemed to me also to symbolize people’s lives. Somewhere on the island people enjoyed the sun, baking away the troubles of the week on the beach or washing them away in the cool Pacific. It happened every day in Hawai‘i. And somewhere someone was having a bad day, like me, full of emotional storms and cloudy thoughts. Microclimates, both natural and emotional.

  I wondered what kind of day Tim had experienced, if he’d seen my name in the paper, on the radio or the TV. Would he try my phone, not realizing I had unplugged it? When would I find a few private minutes to call him?

  Once home, my mother took a casserole out of the oven and we had dinner, all the time not talking about anything that mattered—a job my father was bidding, some antics by Ashley and her sister, even, God help us, the weather forecast. My troubles were like an unwelcome guest at dinner, one we had to feed but tried hard to ignore. There was no word from either of my brothers.

  Finally we were finished. I stood up to help clear the table, then paused. “I don’t know how this is going to end,” I said. “I’m gay. I can’t change that. But I don’t think I did anything wrong, and I don’t deserve to be suspended. I want to fight, but I don’t want to do anything that will hurt you.”

  “I think you should give this up,” my father said. “T
here are other things you can do where they won’t care about you. Be a decorator. A hairdresser. Something like that, that māhūs do.”

  “I don’t want to be a decorator. I want to be a cop.”

  “Well, you can’t be,” my father said, yelling. “They don’t want you. They can’t be any clearer than they have been.”

  “I won’t back down,” I yelled back. “What I do on my own time doesn’t make a goddamned bit of difference when I’m on the job!”

  “Please, no more yelling,” my mother said. “Now, Kimo, bring those dishes to the kitchen. Al, go into the living room and sit down.”

  We watched a couple of silly sitcoms together, the tension between me and my father simmering, my mother always ready to jump into the breach between us. The occasional calls that evening were from family friends, some close, some merely curious. My mother or my father would answer, give a brief explanation, and then beg off.

  We watched the eleven o’clock news together in the living room, Lui’s station, of course. The reporter who had harassed me did a live shot in front of the Waikīkī station, all professional and business-like. All he had to say, really, was that the department had uncovered improprieties in my handling of an important case, the murder of a prominent Honolulu businessman. The official department statement said that was the cause of my suspension. “But our own inside sources say Kanapa‘aka was suspended because of the discovery of his homosexuality,” he said. “Starting Monday, a new series will investigate gay cops, here and on the mainland. Stay tuned!”

  My parents and I went to bed soon after the news, still without hearing anything from Lui or Haoa. I thought it was very strange, though I imagined Lui might be working. Haoa ought to be home with Tatiana and the children, and even if he didn’t want to call I was sure Tatiana would make him.

  I was back in my childhood room, Town and Country Surf posters on the wall, long forgotten books on the shelves. I picked up a few—a couple of Punahou textbooks, some Ursula K. LeGuin and Ray Bradbury from a brief flirtation with science fiction, two dozen paperback Agatha Christie mysteries, a handful of novels by second-rate writers I’d stumbled on in the course of trying to discover my own literary tastes. Even a half-dozen oversized children’s books, bright colors and not too many words. I remembered Babar, King of the Elephants, his monkey friend and the withered old lady who was his teacher.

  I slipped under the covers with Babar, trying to lose myself in the innocence of childhood. I read all the way through the book, smiling at the rhinoceros in his three-pointed hat and the monkey Arthur dressed up for skiing. When I started yawning, I put the book down, but I still could not fall asleep for a long time. I kept going over what I had done, trying to see if I could have done anything differently, and how that might have affected what happened. No matter what I thought I could do, however, the end was always the same.

  My room was right over the front door, and I woke to the ringing of the doorbell, adrenaline coursing through me. I looked at the clock; it was almost three a.m. Who could it be? Surely even the television crews went home to sleep at night.

  I put my robe on and walked down the hall to my parents’ bedroom, where the light was on. My parents both had their robes on, and my father led the way out into the hallway. “Who do you think it is?” I asked.

  “There’s only one way to find out,” my father said. I followed him down the stairs, my mother behind us. The bell rang again before we could get to it. “All right, all right. Keep your pants on.”

  He looked through the peephole first, then pulled the door open. It was Haoa, looking tired and disheveled, like he’d been in a fight. There was an ugly red bruise under his left eye, and though the night air had turned chilly, he wore no jacket, just a t-shirt with the name of his landscaping firm on it, and a pair of drawstring pants in a wild zebra pattern.

  “What’s the matter!” my mother said. “Haoa, come in.”

  My father stepped aside, and my brother came in, not looking at me. My mother took him by the hand and led him to the kitchen, where he sat in the harsh light of the overhead fluorescents as she started to minister to his bruised face. “What happened to you?” she asked. “Have you been home? Does Tatiana know where you are? You should call her. She’s probably worried sick.”

  “She doesn’t care where I am. She told me.”

  “Did she do this to you?” my father asked. “Tatiana?”

  He shook his head. “This is not her fault.” He nodded toward me. “It’s his.”

  My parents both looked at me. I held my hands out. “I’ve been with you.”

  “You’ve been with men,” Haoa said. “That’s your problem. Māhū.”

  “Haoa,” my father said. “This is your brother.”

  “He can say what he pleases. So who did this to you? Another māhū?”

  Haoa sneered, and the act of turning his mouth up caused him to wince with pain. “Hold still,” my mother said. She dabbed at his wound with cotton dipped in hydrogen peroxide, and he winced again.

  “Tell us what happened,” my father said.

  “We finished the landscaping around the pool at the Mandarin Oriental,” Haoa said. “I took the crew to a bar in Waikīkī to celebrate.” He paused while my mother applied mercurochrome with a q-tip. It looked like he was being decorated with war paint, preparing for a big battle. I wondered if she could do the same for me.

  “The news came on while we were in the bar, and one of the guys recognized Kimo. ‘Hey, Howard, it’s your brother,’ he said. We all watched. It turned my stomach.”

  I looked at him, and he held my eyes for a long minute and finally he had to look away. I wondered how I could feel so connected to him, through bonds of blood and familial love, when he seemed to hate me so much.

  “We had some more to drink,” he said. “I got angrier and angrier. The guys teased me. Somehow we got the idea to go out and beat up some fags.”

  “Jesus,” I said.

  “We raised you better than that,” my father said. “A hooligan. A common criminal.”

  “It wasn’t my fault. It got out of control. We went to this bar, the Rod and Reel Club. We hung around outside and waited to see who went in or came out. This māhū came out and, I don’t know, a couple of us must have started to hit him.”

  “He hit you back,” I said.

  “Not him. A bunch of them spilled out of the bar. Big guys, mean-looking, wearing leather and chains. One of them hit me.”

  “You have more bruises?” my mother asked.

  He shook his head. She started to pack up her first aid kit.

  “Then?” I asked.

  “The police came. They hauled us down to the station. I wanted to stick up for my men. Some of those guys, they don’t have much. A couple of them already have records. So I said it was all my doing, that I conned them into joining me.”

  It was funny, but I believed him. I remembered as a kid how he and Lui used to stick up for each other, even as they picked on me. He was capable of loyalty, and of kindness, too. He treated his employees well, giving them bonuses and advancing them wages, and even giving them good recommendations when they quit.

  “You came here from the police?” my mother asked.

  “I called Lui. He came down and bailed me out, and drove me back to Waikīkī so I could get my truck. I went home, must have been about midnight.”

  There had to be more, I thought. “So what are you doing here?”

  “Tatiana,” he said.

  My parents looked at each other, and then at me. Haoa had married for love, this beautiful, exotic, Russian-American hippie who had floated down from Alaska and bonded to my big Hawaiian-Japanese-haole mixed-up brother. I’d seen them at parties, always gravitating toward one another. He seemed incomplete when he was not around her.

  “What did she do?” my mother finally asked.

  Haoa looked down at the table. “I told her what happened, basically. She was pretty pissed off, but we were getting past
it. I told her I was sorry, that I’d been crazy.” He looked up at us. “She’s been crazy herself sometimes. You don’t know her like I do. I thought she owed it to me to forgive me, and she was going to.” He paused. “Then the māhū called her.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “The māhū we beat up.” He sighed deeply. “My luck. I take a punch at the first māhū I see, it turns out to be her hairdresser.”

  I laughed. “You mean that guy, what’s his name, your kids call him Uncle something?”

  “Uncle Tico. I didn’t recognize him. I mean, Christ, it was dark, he was coming out of this faggot bar, giggling or some shit.” He looked straight at me. “It was like he was you. I wanted to punch you. Jesus, I wanted to kill you. So I took it out on him.”

  I closed my eyes. How many more innocent people were going to be dragged into this awful vortex my life had become?

  “And?” my mother said finally. “What did Tatiana do?”

  “She threw a vase at me. Bounced off the side of my head. Hey, Ma, you got any aspirin? My headache’s coming back.”

  Our mother went to get him a pill. When she came back, he continued. “She said she could almost forgive me if it had been a stranger, but not Tico. I had to have known it was him, I had to have been acting out against her. You believe it? Acting out against her. She reads too many goddamn books.”

  He took the aspirin with a swig of cold water from the refrigerator door. “Anyway she kicked me out. I could have gone to Lui’s but I didn’t want to face Liliha. You know she and Tatiana are like this.” He held up two fingers, intertwined. “If I’d known he was going to be here, I’d have gone there anyway.”

  “Such discord in my house,” my father said. “Husband against wife, brother against brother, man against strangers.” To his credit, Haoa lowered his head again. I thought my father was about to launch into another tirade, but instead he looked at the clock. “It’s late,” he said. “We all need our sleep. In the morning, we’ll see how things look.”

  My mother hurried upstairs to get out fresh sheets for Haoa’s old bed. “All the chickens come home to roost,” my father said as he shut off the kitchen light behind us.