by T W Neal
But, after the first few days, I don’t like it.
At all.
Getting to Hanalei is an hour-long carsick ride along the narrow curvy road in the big echoing school bus. There are four bridges to cross: two in Wainiha, one at Lumahai, and one outside of Hanalei. The road is super dramatic, with cliffs on one side so close you could touch them with the windows down, and the ocean far below on the other.
The driver goes all the way to the top of our path in the morning to pick Minka and me near Taylor Camp, and we are the first kids on the bus. Then, she picks up the rest—Mahuikis, Chings, Haradas, Makas, Tai Hooks, Wongs, and Chandlers. When we return at the end of the school day, the driver goes all the way to the End of the Road and drops us off first, then drops the others on the way back. The other kids are mad about the extra time they have to spend on the bus getting us to and from our jungle outpost, so they grumble and try to pinch us when we walk past.
Minka and I are the only two haoles in our class. Everyone else is shades of brown with black or brown hair, and blonde Minka and redheaded me stand out like two things that don’t belong. School is a non-stop day of poking, pinching, tripping, hair-pulling, and name-calling. “Dirty hippie! Stinkin’ haole crap! Go back to the Mainland!” they hassle us.
Soon I’m happy if the kids just ignore me, and during recess I go to the library if it’s open, or try to find a corner to hide in and read. I still wish I had ESP powers and could do things with my mind, maybe zap the mean kids. It was never this bad when I went to public preschool on Oahu. I know I’m different-looking, with freckles and orangey hair, but I’ve never felt ugly before.
I wish for black hair and beautiful brown skin with a longing as sharp as hunger. As it is, I stand out in any crowd like a lit match, and that’s not a good thing on Kauai.
To make things worse, I usually forget some item of clothing when dressing in the early-morning dark. Usually it’s my rubber slippers, but today, a Monday, I forget my panties.
Mrs. Harada, our teacher, stands at the blackboard in the mornings, using the yardstick as a pointer and reminding us what season it is in some other world. I don’t even know what a snowflake is, but I stare at the weather chart and say “blizzard” with everyone else. This morning, I’m separated from Minka. While Mrs. Harada’s back is turned, I crawl across Morning Circle in my homemade dress, trying to sit next to my friend and accidentally showing my okole to the entire first grade.
Mrs. Harada, gigantic in a purple muumuu with a bun so tight it pulls her forehead wrinkle-free, smacks my bare butt out of nowhere with her yardstick. It feels like being struck by lightning, and I shriek.
“Where are your panties?” Mrs. Harada bellows. “For shame! Go to the principal’s office!”
I’m terrified, and my butt smarts in a way that makes being spanked by my dad feel like nothing. I’m not going to the principal’s office! I scurry over to my metal desk and hide underneath, grasping onto the metal leg of it. The room bursts into nervous giggling, the other kids whispering and pointing behind their hands.
I’ve never been yelled at by a grownup except my parents—I’m usually petted and loved by adults. “She’s so smart and look at that pretty hair” is what they say.
Mrs. Harada doesn’t think I’m smart or pretty. In just two weeks I know she doesn’t like hippie kids, and me especially.
“Come out! Right now!” Mrs. Harada smacks the ruler on her hand. This doesn’t invite me out. Instead, I wrap my arms and legs around the strut of the desk and hunker down, hiding behind my long hair. It can’t get any worse than this.
Mrs. Harada pries my arms off, scolding all the while, but I’m pretty strong and reattach, octopus-like. She goes for my legs, and gets both of them, hauling me bodily out from under the desk by the ankles. Once again, my bare behind is visible, but I don’t care. I just forgot my panties. What’s the big deal? I don’t say these things, but stubbornness has kicked in. I hang onto the desk with all my strength, biting my lips and wriggling to get away.
The other kids are too scared of Mrs. Harada to laugh, and cluster in a group as far away from our struggle as possible. She wrestles and grunts and scolds, and finally hollers for help from Miss Kinch, a tall skinny lady who looks like Olive Oyl and teaches the next grade on the other side of the room. The two of them pry me out from under the desk, kicking and biting, and I’m physically dragged into Mr. Beck’s office. Mrs. Harada sits me on a hard wooden chair in front of him.
Mr. Beck’s a large blond man with a kind, weathered face. He knows Pop from surfing, and my dad calls him “Nick” and his wife is “Pam.” He lives with his family right in front of a good break at Hanalei Bay called Waikokos. Sometimes we play on the beach with his two sons, Ducky and Hobie, while the adults are out surfing. Ducky’s kind of bossy, but Hobie, who’s younger, is nice. I like Hobie because he has a lot of freckles and his name rhymes with Toby.
Mr. Beck seemed nice at the beach, but right now he looks annoyed at being interrupted. His big shoulders are hunched in his aloha shirt. His hands are paused on a typewriter that looks too small for his fingers as he peers at me through glasses perched on his nose. He looks like the kind of guy who should be out chopping trees, not typing tiny forms on an old Remington. “What’s this?”
Mrs. Harada’s tight black bun is coming loose and she’s not happy about it, patting the place on her forehead where her hair is unraveling. “This girl has no panties. We’d call the mother if they had a phone, but those haoles live out at Taylor Camp.” Her voice is mean.
I’m so tired of “dirty hippie,” “fucking haole,” and “stupid haole girl, you so ugly.”
I look up at Mrs. Harada. “We aren’t Taylor Campers. We bathe every day. We have a clean outhouse. My parents mostly smoke weed at night, not all day like the Campers do. My dad has a job, and we live in a real house. We’re surfers—that’s why we’re on Kauai. We are NOT at Taylor Camp.”
Mrs. Harada turns and glares down at me.
I’m paralyzed. There is nothing scarier than Mrs. Harada’s fully loaded eye cannon. She squints mean at Mr. Beck. “You’d better do something about this girl. Toby has an attitude, and it sets a bad example for the other students. So unsanitary. She probably has ukus.”
“I’ll handle this,” Mr. Beck says. Hanging behind his desk is a ping-pong paddle whose function I worry about.
Mrs. Harada glides out like there are wheels under her purple muumuu.
Ukus are head lice. I don’t have them right now, but I did a few months ago, so I keep quiet. My butt is still stinging. I stare at my knees and pick at a scab. I wish I could jump up, open my wings like Pegasus the winged horse, leap right out the window into the sky, and keep on going.
“We have to talk about what happened. But first you’re going to the nurse. She has extra clothes for accidents. Let me show you where it is.” Mr. Beck’s voice is gentle.
I hop off the chair and follow him out of the office and down the echoey wood porch to the nurse’s office. Miss Inouye is both the nurse and the office lady, and she clucks disapprovingly over my many mosquito bites, scabs, and the tube worm cut getting infected on my foot. The two of them check me over from head to foot, and Miss Inouye even looks through my hair for ukus, and I’m relieved to be uku-free. Eventually, I walk with Mr. Beck back to his office, covered with Betadine and Band-Aids, wearing a pair of too-big panties under my dress.
I sit on the hard chair and stare at the ping-pong paddle. Mr. Beck sees where I’m looking and chuckles. “Don’t worry. No paddling today. But where are your panties?”
“I got dressed in the dark and forgot. There’s no light in my room because there’s no electricity.”
“So, you have panties? No one took them off you?”
“No. I just forgot them.”
“Well, I’d like for your mom to bring in an extra pair in case this happens again.”
I nod vigorously in agreement.
“Why don’t you spend the day in
my office?” Mr. Beck says. “We’ll call it detention. Do you read?”
“Yes, please.” I’m thrilled. So far, other than Minka, I haven’t made a single friend, and somewhere comfortable and protected to hide with a book sounds like heaven.
I spend the day on the padded bench under Mr. Beck’s window, lying on my tummy reading The Secret Garden, a favorite. Mr. Beck brings me lunch on a cardboard tray like I’m special.
The school lunches, which I get free because we are on food stamps, are so delicious. A shloop of runny canned peaches in sugar syrup—yum! A mound of spaghetti chopped up and mixed with red sauce and burger—red meat! White flour pasta! My own little carton of milk—so tasty!
And today is especially good because there’s a shortbread almond cookie. These special treats are baked in big cookie pans, cut into squares, and marked with a single almond. I save the cookie for last and sit holding it with two hands, gnawing on it with my front teeth. I’m a squirrel with a nut, trying to make the nut last longer.
“You like those?” Mr. Beck looks up at me from his paperwork. “You can have mine.” Mr. Beck hands me his cookie.
I love detention.
Mr. Beck has no way to talk to my parents at the end of the school day, so he writes a note, folds it tight, and pins it to my dress. “Don’t take this off. Give it to your mom and dad.”
I nod.
Bad stuff begins as soon as I leave the safety of his office.
“Stupid haole girl, I saw your punani,” hisses one of my classmates. Punani is the Hawaiian word for what we call “pie” at home, my vagina. “It was gross.” Someone lifts up my skirt on the way to the bus and the bloomers, drooping off my butt, get laughed at.
Mr. Beck comes to the door and smacks his hands, a sound like a gunshot that makes everyone jump. “Enough!” he bellows, and points to the paddle on the wall.
Silence falls.
All of us get on the bus with no talking, but I know the local kids are just waiting for a chance to hassle me away from adult eyes. I sit with Minka and fold my knees up against my chest and turn into the corner of the seat, making myself small. Minka can’t defend me—she has to worry about herself. But she moves up against my back, a warm presence, and we huddle there together. I imagine a cloak of invisibility draped over us like in one of my fairy tales. In my mind I ride a desert stallion and wield a giant sword with a hooked blade, smiting my enemies.
Mom is pissed off after she reads the note, and especially when she sees the red mark on my butt from Mrs. Harada’s ruler. “I’m going in to talk to them. I don’t believe in spanking in school.” She gets red spots on her cheeks and her eyes flash. Mom is scary when she gets mad, and I’m glad she’s not mad at me, even though I was the one to draw attention to our family.
“Don’t make waves,” Pop says. “We don’t want to get them on our case. You never know with the man.” A raft of unspoken suspicion of “the man” is behind those words. Pop is always worried about locals and “the man.”
I wonder who “the man” is, because Mr. Beck is the nicest person at Hanalei School.
I tell Mom Mr. Beck is the person to talk to. She gets in the van and drives to school, and apparently they get along because he pulls me aside the next day and winks. “I have a bag for you in my office if you ever forget anything,” he says. “Tell Mrs. Harada. You can come in and get what you need any time.”
I never speak to Mrs. Harada unless I have to, and this message doesn’t count as having to. I will try to remember everything I need for school forever after.
The Forest House
Chapter Seven
Pakalolo Hunters
Reading by lamplight at the Forest House
Age: 6, Haena, Kauai, 1971
We inherit a big German shepherd mix from some Taylor Campers who are moving back to the Mainland. The dog is named Awa, which you say as Ava because it’s a Hawaiian word. I’m so happy. I’ve wanted a dog forever. Awa’s so tall that his back comes up to the bottom of my ribs. He is gentle with us but barks fierce to other people who approach our house.
Pop has heard lots of stories of people at Taylor Camp getting hassled and beaten up, so at night Awa is tied up outside to keep an eye on things.
Evenings are very mellow, and mellow is how my parents like it. Pop likes to sit on the porch, smoking his hash pipe and watching the stars come out. Mom cooks, and we eat our simple meal together inside because, once the sun goes behind the mountain, the mosquitoes are terrible even with those green curlicue mosquito punks lit by the door. I hate it when even one mosquito gets in, dive-bombing me in the dark with a high-pitched whine. I’ve learned to sleep under my quilt completely covered with only my nose sticking out for air.
After dinner, Mom or Pop read to us in their bed from a chapter book. Bon’s a snuggler, tight against Mom or Pop’s side, sucking her finger. I still suck my thumb, though now that I’m in first grade I only do it at home while listening to stories. I still rub a special bit of the silky-edged blanket I’ve had since I was a baby, though it’s getting really worn-out.
After Bon falls asleep, Mom, Pop, and I read in the front room until bedtime. I have my own tall, molded glass lamp to use, but only under adult supervision because the lamps are so dangerous. I turn the flame up to just before black smoke starts to line the chimney to get the most light. The oil glows like hot honey in the bowl beneath the triangle of flame, and it smells good, too, like pine needles.
Pop is rereading his favorite, Euell Gibbons’s Handbook of a Beachcomber, Mom is reading a book on macrobiotics, and I’m reading Big Red, the Story of a Dog, by Jim Kjelgaard. The author’s name is something I puzzle over again and again, wondering about how to say it. I love the story because Big Red is smart and loyal, like Awa.
We’re startled out of our reading spell by Awa’s ferocious barking, but he’s tied up over by the tree and can’t reach the porch to protect us. Two young local guys, brown, lean, and angry, come up on the porch and pound on the screen doorframe like they haven’t beaten anyone up in a while.
Mom sends me to our bedroom where Bon’s already asleep. I get in bed with her on her mattress under my bed but watch and listen. From my spot, I can see the men’s blue-jeaned legs in the light from the lantern shining through the screen door.
They want my dad’s pakalolo. I don’t know why the grownups all love that stuff, though it does seem to mellow you out.
“We don’t have any weed for sale,” Pop says. He looms in the doorway. He’s bigger than they are, and I hope that’s enough. One thing I’ve already learned from all the stories around Camp: when locals are angry, there’s never just one waiting to pound your ass.
“Fucking haole, we know you get one stash,” one of them says. “And we’re not buying. You give ‘em to us.”
Word about Taylor Camp’s pakalolo growing, which is one of the ways they get money, has gotten out to the community. “Get lost,” my dad says. “Go try the Camp.”
They argue awhile through the screen door, and finally the guys swear and stumble their way off the porch, heading up the long trail back to the road. Pop turns and picks up the club he keeps behind the door—a guava branch as thick as a man’s wrist.
Pop looks like a Viking with the club in his hand, his green eyes fierce in the lamplight, bigger and meaner than those mokes. “Lock the door and keep the girls in the back room. I’m going to make sure they don’t come back,” he says to Mom. He steps out into the dark.
Mom hurries over to “lock” the door—a simple hook and eye latch on a screen door that couldn’t really stop anyone. Outside, Pop lets Awa, who’s been barking the whole time, off the tie-out rope.
Awa streaks up the trail after the men, a ghost-hound nightmare disappearing into the looming black jungle. We can hear snarling and barking as he chases the men up the trail. Pop follows at a run, his flashlight bouncing, and is soon swallowed by the dark. Bonny whimpers in her sleep, and I snuggle close to her and pull the blanket up over o
ur heads.
After a long time, Pop and Awa return. He says the young men ran back to a car parked up on the road and joined three other men who’d broken into and vandalized our van. Awa ran them off, scaring them into driving away. Pop was just backup for our dog.
“The Camp’s getting to have a bad reputation in the community.” Pop is sweaty and amped up, mad about the van’s broken windows. “If we didn’t have Awa, they could have beaten us up and stolen our pakalolo.”
He and Mom discuss what’s happening between the locals, who hate the influx of hippies into the community, and the hippies who just want to be left alone to enjoy the paradise that is Kauai. It’s not a good mix—in fact, very little mixing actually goes on. We all stay separate in our own places on the island.
“From now on, we lay low. No hanging out where the locals go,” he says. I thought we were already doing that. “We’ll just keep such a low profile they’ll forget we’re here. That’s what Henry says we should do.”
I always try to lay low at school, too, but it’s lonely and there aren’t many places to hide. They spot me because of my red hair, and in class I can’t help raising my hand if I know the answer, in spite of kids hissing, “No ack, haole girl” from behind me.
“No ack” means don’t stand out. Don’t get above yourself. “The nail that sticks up gets pounded down,” says Mrs. Harada.
I try not to ‘ack,’ but I love learning stuff and knowing the answers.
Not seen and not heard does seem to be the way to go, but those guys came all the way out to our hideout way in the jungle! Pop says he wishes he never sold his shotgun, and he worries about having his camera stolen. He still takes pictures, but no longer tries to sell them. It’s crushed something in him to give that up, but everyone’s afraid to publish any photos of Kauai. People might find out what a paradise it is here, and the locals don’t want that.