Freckled

by T W Neal

  This whole thing is weird, and kind of gross, but nothing too scary. Not like the terrible thing he said about spearing us, or when those guys came to our house looking for pakalolo. I start to cry again, remembering that, but make myself stop so I don’t make him mad.

  The boy straightens up and fastens his trunks. His voice comes out hard again. “If you tell anybody that we did this, I’ll spear you and your haole crap family.”

  I bite my lips to keep from sobbing out loud. Tears run down my face as I imagine the spear stabbing my parents and Bonny.

  He holds his hand out to me. “Let’s go catch that octopus now.”

  “I don’t want to.” My voice comes out all shaky. “I don’t want you to spear us.”

  “I won’t. As long as you don’t tell.” I wonder what I’m not supposed to tell—what he did with his root? I’m not scared of that, I’m scared of his threats, of how mean I can see he really is.

  “Come on, let’s go get the spear. Only for the tako, I promise.” His voice is soft, and he reaches to take my hand. I almost let him because he’s being nice again, and I want him to be nice.

  But what if he takes me to his house and spears me there? What if he lets his brothers and sisters beat me up? I’ve seen his eyes, and I know he hates me.

  I jump to my feet and do what I should have done when he first started leading me into the trees—I run, straight into the thick ironwoods toward the ocean.

  I burst out of the trees, scratched and burning from the branches, and run straight to the van. My face feels numb and hot at the same time. My diaphragm spasms because it feels like I can’t get enough air. I pull open the van’s door and jump in, and scramble around locking all the doors and rolling up the windows.

  “What are you doing?” Mom wakes up on the back bed, her hair fuzzy and face crumpled. Bonny’s still asleep, a soft blonde mound.

  “He’s going to come spear us.” I crawl into the back and cling to her, tight as a baby monkey. “He’s going to spear us.” I burrow my wet, hot face into her boobs.

  “What?” Mom goes rigid, her arms tight around me, her voice getting loud. “Who said this to you?”

  I tell her a local boy made me do weird things with his root in the bushes and he threatened us with his spear.

  She gets really quiet and rubs my back until the sobbing and hiccupping finally stop. And then she tells me not to go anywhere alone with strangers.

  Not go with strangers? I don’t remember ever hearing that before. Until today, the world, other than school, has been full of interesting and kind people, adults especially. She checks me over for any marks. There are none. “You’re going to be okay,” she says, soft but fierce. “We have to talk to Pop and decide what to do.”

  We drive the van to pick Pop up from work, and I eye the clustered houses across the street as we drive past them, wondering which one the boy lives in, wondering what his name is, wondering if he went back for his spear and got the tako on the reef by himself. He probably did.

  I’m sad that we didn’t just catch it together. I wish so hard that we had just caught it together. It could have happened that way.

  Mom tells Pop when she picks him up that a local boy made me do weird things. They make me tell the story again. I’m so worried that he’ll spear us in our beds at night that I cry again. Pop says no, that won’t happen. We have Awa, and Pop will protect us with his club.

  They discuss what to do, but since I don’t know what house the boy lives in or what his name is, they decide they can’t do anything since the boy is a local. We can’t draw attention to ourselves with the locals, and the police are “all cousins, in each other’s pockets.”

  “If it was one of the Taylor Camp kids it would be different,” Pop tells Mom in the front seat as we drive back to the Forest House. “We’d be able to do something.”

  I’m disappointed.

  I thought Pop and I would take Awa and Pop’s big guava branch, and Pop would go to each house in that cluster where the boy said he lived, and he’d demand to see the boy who’d threatened his family with a spear—and the boy would come out and I’d point to him and say, “That guy! He threatened us!” And his parents would give him lickens, and he would know he couldn’t hurt people and get away with it—even if we’re haoles.

  Chapter Ten

  The Trees Are Talking

  Me, Minka, and Awa's puppies

  Age: 7, Forest House, Kauai, 1972

  Our stuff from Oahu was eventually brought down to the Forest House in a series of trips from Lihue with the van—but the house is so small that Mom gives a lot of it away to the Taylor Campers, or by leaving it on the steps of the Hanalei Trader, a store where an informal “free store” has begun on the porch.

  Mom even gives away their silver wedding candlesticks, her jewelry box, and the string of pearls from her high school graduation. “Stuff just weighs you down. Practicing detachment,” she says with that far-off stare she gets, like she’s not really there. That’s been happening more and more, and it worries me.

  My toys, so beloved and missed at first, seem babyish now. I give most of them away after Bonny picks what she wants. My favorite things are my art materials and books, though I read so fast we are always having to get new ones from the library. I don’t keep any of my own books—they mold too quickly in the jungle.

  We’ve been at the Forest House about a year, and I’ve found a way to deal with school—besides only going three days a week, I hide in the classroom with a book during recess. At lunch, I sit with Minka and give away the good parts of my lunch whenever other kids ask for them. I’m good at hopscotch, though, and if Minka and I get to the squares first, sometimes we can play a game with a bit of broken chain to mark our spots until the local girls spot us and chase us off.

  I play with Minka at home, but her reputation is even worse than mine. When we’re together we get called “fucking haole bitches” and “dirty, stinky hippies,” but when I’m alone it’s just “haole crap,” which is slightly better. Eventually, I’m tired of hiding with my books, and I like playing hopscotch and four square, so I begin to try to join games. Sometimes I get to play with the kids that aren’t popular; a chubby Filipino girl named Glenda even lets me sit with her at lunch when I give her my desserts.

  I can run fast during PE and some of the boys like me, like Samson Chandler who’s Hawaiian and lives in Wainiha and rides my bus. He sticks up for me and tells his friends I can play, and because he says to let me, I get to play four square with them because I’m fast and play hard. I feel bad about leaving Minka behind, but if I don’t, I’ll never make any other friends.

  Now that I’m in second grade I have Miss Kinch. She’s a little nicer than Mrs. Harada. She even calls on me when I have my hand up because I usually know the answer and do my homework, especially anything to do with reading. I’ve been tested and I’m average at math, but I can read at a high school level. Things are getting a little better until Kira Yoshimura, the prettiest girl in my class, decides she really hates me.

  Kira is usually Miss Kinch’s pet (Miss Harada’s too) but, for some reason, one day Miss Kinch calls me up to the board to write the spelling words for everyone to study. Kira usually does it, and when I turn around from doing my best handwriting on the chalkboard with the spelling words, her narrow, hate-filled eyes give me a shiver.

  She’s tiny and cute, like the Japanese kokeshi doll Mom got me at a garage sale, with shiny perfect hair and clothes, but she’s mean as a centipede and just as sneaky. The small, pretty blue centipedes are the most venomous, and that’s what Kira’s like.

  “No ack,” Kira hisses. She sits behind me and pulls my hair or pinches the back of my arm whenever I raise my hand. “Go back to the Mainland, haole crap,” she whispers whenever I have to pass her.

  I think about telling on her as I sit down at my battered desk to rearrange my colored pencils. Rearranging my colored pencils always makes me feel better. I put them in rainbow order and sharp
en each one carefully with my little plastic sharpener, and then I slide them back into their cardboard box just so. Folding the lid of the box shut and tucking it in my desk, I decide not to tell. Telling on the kids who hassle me only makes it worse. Later, they add “snitch,” “tattletale,” and “liar” to the list of things they call me, and Kira’s someone everyone listens to. Even the adults.

  Haole Crap, Kira’s nickname for me, catches on and sticks. I try to stay out of her way, but she hunts me down at recess with her posse of girls, and wherever I’ve found to hide, they torment me with pinching and name-calling.

  A black female Shepherd named BlackCoat appears at our house from Taylor Camp one day and joins Awa in doggy marriage. They have puppies, and I get to have a puppy for my very own, which makes me even happier than my bike. I name him Argos after Ulysses’s faithful dog.

  As soon as Argos is weaned, I begin to spend more and more time away from the house, playing with him out in the forest because things are getting weird at home. Pop is gone a lot working or surfing, and Mom is sad and spaced-out, usually napping while Bonny is at Mommy School with the other Taylor Camp kids being babysat.

  At last Hanalei School is out for the summer, and Argos and I build a fort halfway between our house and Taylor Camp for Minka and me to play in. I build the fort up against a Java plum tree with sticks tied together and cover it with big, fan-shaped palm leaves to keep the rain off. I use a nice little rock inside for a table. I like to draw out there or play Barbies when Minka joins me. I bring my drawing stuff back and forth each time because it rains almost every day, and my fort isn’t waterproof.

  The drawing paper is expensive, good-quality art paper on a big spiral pad that my fairy godmother Catherine Elber sent in the mail. She’s a friend of Mom and Pop’s that met me when I was a baby in California. Ever since, she’s called herself our fairy godmother because she loves fairies and Bonny and me. I’m always drawing or illustrating a story, using colored pencils or pens, and my nice Grumbacher watercolor paints from Aunty Jan.

  Eventually the other puppies are given away, and only Awa, BlackCoat, and Argos remain. The fleas are terrible and bother us more than the mosquitoes, but Mom doesn’t believe in using a bunch of chemicals to get rid of them.

  One day, coming back from Hanalei, we spot two women hitchhiking on the road. They’re carrying a surfboard and a surf mat, which is what Mom uses for surfing, so Pop pulls over to give them a ride. They climb in the van, telling us they hear there’s good surf near Taylor Camp, and they plan to stay at the Camp for a month.

  The surfing sisters from California are named Patty and Debbie, and they have huge smiles, big laughs, and waist-length, ripply blonde hair. Mom and Pop like them and offer to let them stay with us instead, in the shack where my dad shapes his surfboards. They are delighted to accept, even though the shack is just a flimsy hut made of bamboo and plastic.

  Patty is a great artist, and Bonny and I spend happy hours with her drawing together. Her art is fun pen-and-ink, and I learn a lot from her. Every day the girls go surfing at nearby breaks with Mom and Pop. Because they are barely in their twenties, they still like to play games, so Bonny and I play board games and Red Light Green Light and Simon Says with them. They come into the house and join us for evening reading time since they don’t have a lamp at their shack. With Patty and Debbie there, it’s like having two fun big sisters for a whole month.

  But after they leave, Mom begins to act strange and sad again. Sometimes she does more than meditate, which she’s always done—now she just sits and stares into space. She plays with us less, and when she does, it’s like she’s not really there. She doesn’t keep the house clean like before. Sometimes she wanders around the clearing, crying and talking to herself. She gets mad a lot, screaming when Bon and I bicker or forget something.

  I always check her pupils when I get home, which I’ve been doing since the Oahu house to keep on top of things. Lately her pupils are always big, which means she’s been smoking pakalolo or eating mushrooms.

  “I can hear the trees talking,” she says one day. “Can’t you hear them talking?”

  I listen hard, and don’t want to disappoint her, so I say, “I think so.” But all I hear is the wind in the leaves, and the creak of branches, and the loud chirps of the cardinals who come to eat the papaya seeds on the compost pile.

  One morning I go down by the stream and Mom’s there, naked, her long hair hanging around her in silky brown ribbons. She’s digging a spoonful of bright red dirt out of the riverbank with a spoon. “I have an iron deficiency.” She eats the dirt, scooping up water to wash it down. After she swallows it she says, “There’s a lot of iron in this soil. It’s goodforyou. Want some?”

  “No thanks.” I don’t want her to make me eat the dirt, so I tug on the rope I have around Argos’s neck, hurrying into the jungle. I think guiltily of the junk food school lunches I love and how upset she’d be if she realized how badforyou they are. The lunches are the only thing I miss about school during the summer.

  Argos happily follows wherever I want to go, clambering over the rocks behind me. He’s going to be a big dog because his paws are big, but his body is still roly-poly and fuzzy. He’s golden tan with black markings on his face, back and tail, like his father, Awa. He is the perfect best friend, even sleeping in my bed with me.

  I’m reading the Pippi Longstocking series now. Pippi makes me feel better about my red hair. I wish I could live in my own house with all my pets like she does. I also love the Anne of Green Gables stories because Anne has red hair and is a reader, too.

  During our evening reading time, Mom’s doing worksheets in a big blue binder. “You’re doing school too?” I ask, pointing to the literature she’s reading.

  “It’s spiritual stuff. I’m learning ancient wisdom and things like telepathy,” she says. I read the title. OCCULT AND ALTERNATIVE STUDIES it says. “Telepathy’s like ESP.”

  “I can’t do ESP. I tried.” I still like the idea of ESP.

  “Well, sometimes I can hear thoughts, the thoughts of the spirits of those who were here before us.”

  I don’t know what to say. Mom worries me, so I open my book, so I can disappear into the story.

  Pop pretends not to hear this discussion. He’s repairing a tear in his throw net, using a bamboo shuttle and a roll of fishing line. He shakes his head and walks away from her when she says weird stuff, but they don’t fight. They like things quiet and peaceful.

  But Pop’s gone during the day at his job, so he doesn’t know how Mom gets lately, and I’m afraid he’ll get mad if I try to explain how weird she’s acting. I’m worried and try to cheer her up and distract her out of her moods, but she either ignores me or yells. “Can’t you entertain yourself for even a minute, for God’s sake?”

  That’s not fair. I’m super good at entertaining myself. Janet used to say I could have fun in a paper bag, and it’s true. I’m good at making things and inventing stories, and I’m never bored—but I miss the Mom who laughed and hugged and read to us a lot. This withdrawn, sad Mom with her faraway stare, who mutters and wanders and eats dirt, makes me feel lonely and scared.

  Bonny’s always easygoing, and she entertains herself or we play together when I’m at the cottage. She’s still too little to go with Argos and me into the jungle though, because she can’t climb around like I can, and she gets really puffy and itchy from mosquito bites, which don’t even make a bump on me anymore.

  Mom acting strange makes me go to Taylor Camp more to hang out with Minka. We make tree houses for our Barbies at her place, constructed out of cardboard boxes that food from the co-op came in. I like it at her house, with its smells of pakalolo, cooked food, and incense. Minka tells me to watch out for a certain guy.

  “He might try to get you to come with him somewhere.” Minka’s eyes are light blue, like a really sunny day when you can’t see into the sky. “He likes to touch you and make you touch him back. It’s gross.”

  I�
�m always watching for men with that glitter in their eyes. “Don’t go with strangers,” I say. “Run like hell.”

  “Even if they’re not a stranger, run like hell,” Minka says, and we laugh.

  One day when I go over, Hawk, Minka’s father says he needs us to help him. I’ve never been to the big room roofed in clear fiberglass where they dry the pakalolo the Camp grows. There’s a picnic table in the middle, and clusters and clumps of the pakalolo hang upside down from rafters above it. The smell inside is thick, sweet, earthy.

  Hawk sits me down next to Minka and shows me how to properly roll a joint.

  I smooth out a thin, delicate Zig-Zag paper, and lay a row of bud, which is fuzzy seeds mixed with a little leaf, at one end of the paper. He shows me how to pack it tight by pressing down with my fingertips, and roll the joint carefully, keeping it from getting lumpy or loose, pressing it as I go.

  “Just like rolling up a sleeping bag,” Hawk says. “Real tight and cozy.” He winks. He has Minka’s light blue eyes and a little scraggly beard like lichen. He’s nice and laughs a lot.

  There’s an odd taste as I lick the edge of the crinkly paper to seal it and twist the ends. Now I know how to make joints as well as pack a bowl, which Pop taught me, so I could fix his for him in the evenings.

  School starts again, the usual torture, and one day I come hurrying down the long path afterward, eager to see Argos and go to my fort to recover.

  Usually Awa, BlackCoat, and Argos bark to say hi when I come home, running out from under the house in a whole family. But today when I get to the house, there’s no Argos with his whipping tail and licking, no happy greeting barks from BlackCoat. Only Awa comes out from under the house, silent and alone. His head and tail are down, and his eyes are sad. I pet him to cheer him up.

  Mom’s sitting on the steps of the front porch. Bonny’s in her lap, sucking her finger and playing with Mom’s hair, her head against Mom’s chest. Mom’s staring into space, but her face is pale with red blotches that I can see even with her tan.