She remembered the day she knew this seed of Emma could invade her and betray. It had happened at Hawaiian Mass, the Catholic Painted Church at Honaunau . . . (Pono never entered a church, not since the years of God’s desertion when she and Duke were hunted down. But she was fair, let Run Run take the girls to Mass and teach them her, Run Run’s, version of religion. “God not da faddah, he just da spoiled moody child, but you got to go t’rough him to get to da real power, his mama, Mot’er God. She da real Almighty! She run da heavens alone. Original single parent. When somethin’ bad happen, usually mean she let God try his hand, and he screw up plenny. You need somet’ing important, you go directly Mot’er God. Jesus, Mary, Joseph? Dey just small potatoes, part of da chorus, neh?”)
Pono remembered this particular Sunday. Junior Girls Choir singing in Hawaiian, accompanied by locals playing gourds, shell trumpets, bamboo pipes, nose flutes. A special Mass commemorating King Kameha-meha’s birthday, when people came from miles around, crowding the little church, spilling out onto the lawns and down into the cemetery. Jess, eleven, not speaking Hawaiian, was still invited to join in Junior Girls Choir. During choir practice, Pono saw her little hands shake as she strained, trying to learn the ancient words. Pono began coaching her night after night, while the others slept. That Sunday, she had stood outside an open window of the church, waving her arms like a maestro, mouthing the Hawaiian words, filling Jess with confidence as her choir sang (led by those twin showoffs, Daisy and Pansy Freitas).
Mother God, how she opened up her lungs and sang! Mouth wide as a hungry young bird’s, pronouncing every vowel, drowning out everyone.
Hemolele, Hemolele, Hemolele! Ke akua mana loa! Ka lam a me ta honua, e ho-opiha me kou nani. Hosanna i ke ki‘eki‘e. Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord, God almighty! Heaven and earth are filled with your glory. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is Nani wale ke ali’i, o ka Iseraela, e hele mat ana, ma ka inoa o ka Haku. Hosana ke ki’eki’e, Hosana i ke ki’eki’e. Hosana i ke ki’eki’e. He of Israel who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest, Hosanna in the highest, Hosanna in the highest.
Seeing her grandmother out on the lawn, waving her arms, mouthing the words, not caring that the crowds looked on, thinking only of Jess, something deep inside the girl had answered. A light, an audible and pointed light, soared out of her with the warbling yearning of a dove, the resonance of a bell. She sang in someone else’s voice, sang the ancient words so perfectly, so beautifully, snoring elders blinked awake and stood up in their pews. A mangy dog wandering the aisles whined softly, going down on its belly. Women wept, and Father Rodriguez—leaning forward in his chair—stared openmouthed and crossed himself. After Mass, tearful elders gathered round Jess, hugging her, telling Pono her granddaughter sang Mai nei loko! Mai nei loko! From the heart!
In that moment, Pono had turned her back on her, shunning Jess. For the rest of that summer, the girl retreated to the shadows in abject sadness, wondering what wrong she had done.
So proud of her! Like pride I remember having for her mother. She could hurt me, I saw it then. Hurt me like Emma. Well, half of her could hurt me. The other half, the haole half, wasn’t worth my spit.
And yet, each of these girls was half of something else. Duke said she had to learn to accept this, that the true, original blood of their ancestors, the only one she recognized, was dying. Their granddaughters, Duke said, were hybrids of a new world. Their offspring were even more alien, Hawaiian blood blurred into quarters, someday eighths. A world Pono didn’t want to know. Yet, now she was asking them to bring that alien, that mixed-mongrel world, home.
She thought of Toru then, so much a son. He would get an equal share of what she left behind. He could marry local, a girl with thick Hawaiian blood. He could run the farm, let the cousins share the profits but keep their tainted blood away. He could . . . she shook her head, defeated.
Toru, how could I ask such promises of you? At least you are alive. You get from day to day. It seems such an achievement. But dear boy, in your life, have you never loved? Will you never know that passion? To be swept away? This is why I mourn for you, your heart was left a shell. What can I do? What can your cousins do for you when I am gone? Your tutu, Run Run . . . I see her pain, watching you live half a life. She goes down on her knees each day, because you are alive. And sane, not sucking the teat of heroin. But is it enough to live only for one’s self?
Thinking of him, whose life she had saved twice, she saw a kind of solitary beauty in the image of people making their way alone, not weighted down with the emotions of another, nothing but the weight of their own flesh as burden. What is it like, I wonder? She who had always lived for another, had wound her life around the existence of this other, so that her life became a sentence, a mystery, a dream. All I ever wanted was that one day we could walk out in the world. Now we are growing old in shadows, Duke and I. My dream has been so small.
Late at night, Toru drove back and forth past the house of women, all the lights ablaze. And he felt whole because, within that place were people he could worry over, look after, long for, love. Finally, lights dimmed, the house went dark. Easing his truck up the gravelly drive beside the old place, a place he knew every inch of, by touch, by memory, he turned off the ignition, lit a cigarette. After a while he leaned back, dozing, as silver moonlight fell across his face. For the moment, he was safe. And they were safe. Everyone was home.
Nā Manawale’a
* * *
The Caring Hearts
THEY LOOKED FOR CLUES. In those first weeks of summer, each woman moved cautiously, watching Pono from a distance, glancing at her sideways over meals. What she was preparing them for, whatever onrushing, nameless event, would be related in her time, at her pace. They slid into routines, individual rhythms, each woman feeling a sense of breath-lessness, of imminent reckoning, like something in a web.
Vanya flew back and forth to Honolulu, brooding over legal briefs on Native Land Rights, National Health Insurance, the fight for Hawaiian Sovereignty. With two associates covering for her, Jess had taken a sorely needed vacation from her practice in Manhattan. As days passed she seemed content to move at dream-pace, letting the hours, the days, rub up against her. Rachel spent her time staring at the phone, waiting for Hiro’s nightly call from Hong Kong or Bangkok. Ming read, or seemed to, eyes aimless with a diligence. Some days she never left her room. Some days she moved in slow motion so her kimono sleeve dragged through the guava jam at breakfast.
Slowly, inevitably, they reverted back to island girls, chattering in Pidgin, beachcombing before dawn, dipping Saloon Pilot crackers in mango juice. Blank whiteness of summer noons drove them to bedrooms where shades were drawn, where they stretched out beside each other, gossiping. And they dozed, smelling the perfume of each other, some times dreaming of each other. Sometimes one would wake and watch the others in sleep, as if watching over them.
Afternoons bled into night, heat warping appetites. Run Run brought up trays of sliced papaya, melons, and stretched out on the floor beside them “talking story,” family myths, histories, getting stories mixed up, different endings, different beginnings, until the dark brought coolness, and the cycle of sleep resumed. It seemed they slept for weeks.
Some nights—all of them drowsing in one of the giant four-posters built for a time when royalty had visited this house—they would sense her presence, even in their sleep. Waking, half rising, they would find Pono there, continuing a story she had left off at days earlier. Anecdotes about her field-workers, their lives. Modestly, she talked about children she now helped send to secondary school, to university.
One evening Run Run cried, “Tell about Nā Manawale’a, ‘Da Caring Heart.’ “Running down the hall, she returned with a huge inscribed koa calabash, awarded Pono by the mayor of Kona District. “Dis one great honor!”
They passed the bowl around, admiring it as Pono explained how the Hawai‘i Island Food Bank worked to prevent the waste of food by receiving donations of surplus p
roduce, and distributing it to the homeless and needy, a growing population on the Big Island. The Caring Heart calabash had been presented to Pono for outstanding contributions, and food donations from her farm, and for outstanding volunteerism on fund-raising drives. Discovering, too late, that the Food Bank was a project of the Social Ministry of the Catholic church, Pono had thrown the calabash out in the mud. Run Run now used it to mix gruel for ducks and pigs.
“Who care about ole calabash,” she said. “Important t’ing is what yoah tūtū doin’ for da poor.” She pumped her pigeon chest out proudly. “You laugh yoahself to tears, see locals’ eye pop when Pono drive up to dere house, askin’ foah food donations foah da bank. See dis big wahine, famous kahuna standing on dere soil. Hah! Dey almost on dere knees, ready give everyt’ing. All dere food, dere house! So she don’t kahuna dem, leave dem lyin’ dead like empty rice sacks!” She hugged herself laughing. “One kanaka, I t’ink ready give his wife and keeds!”
Pono sat back in a scrolled teak chair, its cracked claw feet creaking with her weight. “So much easier to give. I detest asking, driving up and down the roads like beggars. I thought a check would do. But this one”—a finger jabbed at Run Run—“roped me in. Said I couldn’t just give checks, other coffee planters would ‘imi ōlelo, say I was trying buy favors for our farm.”
She paused, studying her granddaughters one by one, each woman big-eyed, over-eager, trying to read in her eyes how they should respond.
“Lot of public relations involved in coffee farming. You need diplomacy.” She looked at Vanya. “It won’t come naturally to you. Rachel or Jess could handle that end of it . . .”
They sat up suddenly alert, like women pulled by strings.
“. . . unless you’re planning to sell the place when I’m gone. You seem so silent on the matter. Have you forgotten the importance of owning land?”
Rachel cleared her throat, speaking softly. “It isn’t that, Tūtū. It’s just . . . we can’t imagine you not here.” She burst into tears, burying her face. “Don’t make me think about it, please!”
Vanya looked at her distastefully, then turned to Pono. “I know you’re thinking of our future. But isn’t it a little premature . . .”
Pono snapped herself into a standing position. “You. Sometimes you’re absolutely blind. Traipsing round the Pacific, woman of the world, solving everyone’s dilemmas. But here”—Pono tapped her heart theatrically—“here at home, within yourself, you can’t face the truth. I am old. My time is coming. Do any of you understand?”
They looked down at their hands like children. Somehow Jess found her voice. “There’s so much we never understood. To think of you . . . dying. Leaving everything unsaid . . .” She turned her head away.
Pono seemed to grow, to dwarf the door she was suddenly moving toward. Her voice turned hard, coming back at them like blows. “You think knowing things will solve your private little griefs? You think I hold the key?”
She felt herself turn ugly, seeing them spread across the bed like bored odalisques, women who led lives of pleasure, luxury. Lives filled with human traffic. She stormed out of the room and down the hall.
“. . . Grow up! Make your decisions and live with them. That’s the key.”
They sat in slow, respirating shock. “I thought,” Vanya whispered, “it would be normal for once. Questions, answers, you know?”
Run Run sighed, shook her head. “You girls nevah understand. She no like questions. You got to wait. One day, maybe she tell you what ‘n’ what.”
“Why, for once, don’t you tell us?” Jess asked. “You know her history. Are you afraid?”
“Yeah,” Run Run said, backing away. “I a true chicken. I tell you what I know, you girls age before my eyes. Not my place to tell . . . and what I know, sometime I no believe.”
Vanya stood impatiently, flinging back her hair. “Same old mysterious crap. I’m flying back to Honolulu in the morning.”
And now, as ever, frustrated by the scene with Pono, they turned on each other.
“And where from Honolulu?” Rachel smiled. “Darwin? Intrigues Down Under?”
Vanya turned, studying her long enough to make the others tense. “Don’t ever . . . presume to criticize my life, you casualty. Without Hiro, you’d be cleaning people’s houses.”
Ming tried to intercede. “Please . . . don’t . . .”
“At least I’m faithful to my husband,” Rachel said.
“His eager prey.”
“What are you faithful to?”
Vanya turned on her then, on all of them, rage flushing her cheeks, so she was beautiful, and dark and broken.
“The barricades! Wherever they are. Wherever our people have to go down on their knees. All those Kānaka-putdown checkpoints, that keep us second-rate. That’s what I work for, what I’m faithful to. While you lie around playing concubine.” She looked at Jess. “And you, still catering to mainland haole whose pets eat better than our kids! And you . . .”
Turning to Ming, Vanya’s words died on her lips. Her cousin looked so eerily frail, she wanted to take her in her arms.
She collapsed on the bed, shaking. “I hate her. I hate her. This is how she leaves us every time, snarling, ripping at each other.”
Rachel stood in a superior way, gathering her sarong round her perfect breasts. “I don’t care where you go, or who you’re sleeping with. I just worry, Vanya . . . that you won’t make it back. That one day you’ll drift out of our lives for good. What would we be, any of us? I mean . . . without each other?”
Jess lay in her room alone, exhausted. This is what Pono can do, what she is capable of. Tearing us apart. Is she, I wonder, jealous? Our lives, allegiances, so bound. We have always had each other. Who did she ever have, but Run Run?
Late that night she woke feeling the house tremble, bottles on the dresser jumped. She turned on a lamp; everything in her room had shifted, pictures hung sideways on the wall. Jess cried out as her bed shook, the floor slanted violently and down in the valley someone screamed. Within minutes the house was astir. Radio reports said seismographs at the Volcano Observatory were dancing.
By dawn, two infants in Hilo had disappeared from their cribs. A fisherman had been taken at Kawaihae, snapped in two by a twelve-foot tiger shark. Random horrors that always presaged volcanic eruptions, as if the earth were purging its bowels of evil. A subterranean arm of Kīlauea Crater, Pu‘u ‘Ō’ō Vent, was surfacing again, threatening to swallow up more homes in the path of its flowing molten lava. By six A.M., the sky was obliterated, gritty clouds lowering across the island. In the distance Jess heard the Wup! Wup! Wup! of Coast Guard helicopters headed for the inundation areas. By seven, Toru was sitting in the driveway, gunning his motor.
Pono strode through the house, instructing everyone. “Pele has begun! Let’s go, you folks.” Looking pointedly at Vanya with her packed suitcase, her reservation on the early flight to Honolulu.
Within minutes, Pono was behind the wheel of her Jeep, Ming and Rachel beside her, holding fruits, ti leaves, fifths of gin. Pele, fiery Goddess of Volcanoes, was demanding offerings. Toru followed in his truck with Jess and Vanya, watching headlights of cars—tourists, locals, shamans—whipping across the landscape, headed for the lava-viewing area. By now, the whole island seemed hung with vog, volcanic ash and fog, and news reports said Pu’u ‘Ō’ō Vent was shooting lava two thousand feet into the air. The island was giving birth again, more families were being evacuated.
During the ninety-minute drive south toward the Hot Zone, they were silent, feeling their metabolisms change. Like demarcated dreams, the land transformed from lush coffee and macadamia nut orchards to thin, emaciated woods, and then, within a few more miles, starkness—the black glittering moonscape of hardened lava. They passed little resurrected villages of Ho’okena and Ho’opuloa where black was absolute. To their left the slopes of Mauna Loa rose thirteen thousand feet. To their right, bleak reminders of Mauna Loa’s great lava flows of 1919, 1926, 1
950—flows that had cindered everything in their path, rain forests, fields, villages.
Pono gazed up at Mauna Loa, remembering another, later flow in the years when she and Run Run were struggling with the farm, nights when she felt so hopeless, so exhausted, she thought of torching the place, leaving nothing but ash. Then one dawn they had heard the rumblings, seen the smoke of Mauna Loa all the way from Captain Cook, and joined hundreds of locals rushing to the Hot Zone, watching as molten lava rushed down to the sea. Vog had been so thick the day was dark as night, the sky ghostly orange, a 1,500-foot lava fountain shooting upward, then flowing like an Oriental scroll.
Finally the lava had slowed, wind shifted, people watched, frightened, as ruby clouds moved in. Then cooled, red cinders filtered down, like delicate spices. Pono had moved close to Run Run, and they laughed, dancing in red showers. Then everyone had danced because that day Pele had been kind, had spared a village, no lives were taken. And in that dancing-time Pono had remembered her long-ago dream, that of a young girl, left alone in Chinatown. A dream of her and Run Run as old women, dancing in showers of cinnamon.
Seeing her cinnamon-dream come true had rekindled Pono’s belief in her personal mana. She could still dream the future, maybe bend it to her will. It gave her strength to work the farm until it almost killed her, until she revived the coffee orchards, resurrected the long-abandoned house for Duke’s someday-homecoming. Down the years, she had dreamed his homecoming with almost penitential rigor. But lately Pono’s dream had deserted her. Now I only dream of dying, my faceless corpse snuggled by eels. Why can’t I see my face?. . . Why? Skidding into a pothole, she swerved the Jeep and cursed.
Passing the Ka’u District, southernmost district of the island, bypassing the villages of Miloli‘i, and Na’alehu, the old sugar towns of Pahala and Punalu’u, they entered Volcanoes National Park and the rumbling arm of Kilauea, Pu’u O’o Vent. Here was a region of ethereal, dripping rain forests, of primeval giant tree ferns. Then, with shocking abruptness, green gave way to another blasted, lava landscape of smoldering pāhoehoe and ‘a‘ā.
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