by T W Neal
“I have to go back to Hanalei School at the end of the summer. Mom says we can’t afford more Calvert School, and she’s not up to doing it this year.” I’ve told Tita about the bullying at Hanalei School and that I’m scared to go back.
“It’ll be okay. I’ll look out for you.”
Tita’s tough and speaks pidgin most of the time, and she scraps dirty when she has to. She’s Portuguese, almost as good as a local, and no one gives her any crap. Minka’s still around, and I look forward to seeing my old friend—but Minka still gets hassled.
Tita rolls on her back and I do, too, and we glance across the river at our campsite. The only way you can tell it’s there is a little gleam off one corner of the plastic roof, where one of the branches Pop put up for camouflage blew away.
“I hope you guys find a house by the time summer’s over,” Tita says. “You don’t want to be camping in the winter.”
“I know.” The Big Flood is never far from our minds, and even if that doesn’t happen again, winter in Wainiha would be terrible in a canvas tent.
I come home from playing with Tita to find Mom lying in bed in our parents’ tent. Pop’s in Hanalei fixing toasters and vacuums. She’s moaning and crying, rolling back and forth with her arms over her belly. Bonny’s with her, eyes big in the gloom of the tent, sucking on her finger with fright.
“It’s the baby,” Mom gasps. “Go get Ricky.”
Ricky’s a good friend of Mom’s, a petite dark-haired single mom with a little girl, Malia. Malia’s a year younger than Bon and plays with us a lot. I run to Ricky’s house and, jumping and babbling, manage to convey that Mom’s sick and it involves the baby. Ricky comes without question, hurrying after me down the short path from her house to our campsite, the green water hose from her house marking the trail beside us.
“I think I’m losing the baby,” Mom says to Ricky, weeping in a way that twists my guts into knots.
Tears sting my eyes like bees. A great sob stuck inside my chest cuts off my breathing. Losing the baby? We all want it so much. Mom’s four months along, and we’ve already looked at a book on pregnancy and can already imagine our little brother, shaped like a bean, with his rebellious name Francis. Bonny’s crying, tears making her eyes bright green as she snuffles around the plug of her finger.
Ricky’s voice is firm but kind. “Why don’t you girls go up to my house for a while? Play with Malia.”
“We don’t want to.” I let out the sob, a rasping cry, and wrap my arms around myself to keep from hugging Mom, who I can see is in too much pain to be touched. “We want to help.”
“You can’t help her with this.” There’s finality in Ricky’s voice.
“Go!” Mom screams, and we run away up the path holding hands.
I try to play with the younger girls and stay distracted at Ricky’s house, but I can’t stop thinking about Mom, in pain. Eventually Ricky comes back, pale and shaky, her black hair escaping from her ponytail. “I think she’s doing a little better. You can go back now.”
Mom’s still in bed, no longer crying—just staring at the tree silhouettes on the wall of the tent in a way that reminds me of when the crazy started, which squeezes my chest with a new feeling—fear. I get in bed with her, and Bonny does too, and we sandwich her between us, stroking her arms and hair until Pop gets home.
We’re too worried to eat much of the simple rice-and-veggies dinner Pop makes, but Mom says the cramps are better and she’s not bleeding very much, so after our evening reading by kerosene lamplight, we go to bed as usual.
I wake up to the sounds of moaning and crying. I jump out of my sleeping bag and unzip the tent.
Mom’s illuminated in the light of a lamp that’s hanging from the tent pole. She’s sitting on a white paint bucket, hunched over, her arms wrapped around her waist. Pop is rubbing her shoulders and stroking her hair as she moans in deep pain. She weeps when the pain passes.
This seems to go on for hours. We’re all scared by the amount of blood in the bucket, and Pop sends Bonny and me back to our tent. They finally decide to go to the hospital.
Pop’s holding a small Diamond Strike matchbox. He brings Bonny and me close in the lamplight and pulls the box open. “This is Francis.”
Lying inside is a tiny baby about the length of Pop’s thumb. He doesn’t have a big head or look funny—he’s proportioned just right, like the little plastic baby that I got for my Barbie. His eyes are closed, his mouth turned up in a smile. His hands and feet have ten digits. He has tiny hairs on his head, a trace of eyebrows, and transparent eyelids show us blue eyes. He even has a tiny penis.
I could stare at my brother’s face forever.
I expected him to look like a tadpole or something, but he’s utterly perfect. He doesn’t seem dead; he looks like he’s sleeping there in a little bed.
This is the only brother I will ever have.
I don’t know how I know, but I know it’s true. My eyes fill up with tears so that I can’t see him anymore. My chest hurts so bad I can’t breathe as Pop closes the matchbox. I swallow the big hard lump of grief down from my chest to my belly so I won’t make things worse for Mom, who looks pale and sweaty as she packs paper towels into her panties to catch the blood. Pop has to half-carry her to the car. I’m afraid she’ll die, but I don’t let that out either.
Following Mom and Pop’s staggering progress down the trail, we go to Ricky’s house. Ricky turns on the porch light and whispers to us to go sleep with Malia. Bonny and I sneak in to snuggle together with Malia in her little bed as Mom and Pop drive to the hospital, over an hour away.
Pressed between the younger girls, breathing their little-girl smell, feeling their warmth, I’m comforted. Malia’s gentle and beautiful with big brown eyes and wispy chocolate-colored hair. She has one hand with the fingers fused together, and tonight I hold it as she sleeps. I like to feel how soft her special hand is. Somehow it makes her even prettier.
Our parents come back to the camp the next morning. Mom’s still white looking and shaky. Pop tucks her into bed under their quilt, and she turns away from us toward the wall of the tent. The sun’s up now, and the trees make dancing shadows on the canvas, and she watches them. She’s not speaking but not crying either.
She didn’t die, which would be the worst, but now I’m terrified of the crazy coming back.
“Bonny and Toby.” Pop’s as serious as I’ve ever seen him. His green eyes are red-rimmed, his face full of wrinkles I’ve never seen before. “Let’s go bury your brother.”
I look at Mom, but she makes a shooing gesture from her nest of quilts. “I can’t come. I said goodbye already.”
Pop picks up the shovel we use for burying our poop and walks into the jungle with the matchbox in his hand.
Bonny and I hold hands as we follow Pop. Bonny’s crying in loud gulping sobs, so I can too, and it’s a relief to let the pain in my chest out in tears and snot as my great big feelings overwhelm me noisily. Pop picks just the right spot under a Java plum tree facing the river. He lets us hold the matchbox to look at Francis while he digs a hole with the shovel.
When we open the box, Francis has become just blob, a melted pinkish outline.
“What happened to Francis?” My voice comes out squeaky with horror. “Why is he melting?”
Pop keeps digging, but he says, “Babies his age are so delicate that as soon as oxygen touches them they begin falling apart.”
I can’t cry anymore; it’s too awful. Bonny and I lean against each other and close the box, holding it in both our hands.
Francis would have been a beautiful baby. A sweet boy. A capable, kind, intelligent, handsome man. Somehow I know these things about him.
We put the matchbox in the hole when it’s good and deep. We cover it with rich black soil from around the tree’s roots. Bonny and I press it down with our hands, and leave our handprints deep in the dirt. The earth is a blanket and we are tucking him in; that makes me feel a little better.
Pop hol
ds our dirty hands, and we stare down at the fresh black pile of soil. “Francis has gone back to heaven,” Pop says. “We don’t know why, but we know he lives on and maybe he’ll pick another family near us to come to next time. We might even see him again, in another body.” Mom and Pop believe that we have many lives, and that children are in heaven, choosing families to come live with to work out their karma.
I don’t feel comforted by this, because Francis is not going to be working out his karma as a part of our family, and I so wanted him to.
Back at camp, Pop gets out his guitar. He’s kept playing since the Forest House and is studying slack-key, a Hawaiian sound with a relaxed plucking technique. The guitar has a circle of black resin and inlaid abalone, and a neck of dark rosewood. Pop sits in his canvas folding chair and plays, rocking gently back and forth, one ankle over the other knee to hold the guitar.
I wrap my arms around my legs and rest my chin on my knees, watching the way his big fingers move among the strings and coax beauty out of them.
He plays. And plays. The notes cover us softly, drifting feathers brushing us, touching us like the coins of light falling though the trees.
Mom lies in bed and stares at the wall of the tent, and we all eventually climb in bed with her. We press our bodies against her until darkness covers us, and the day we lost Francis is finally over.
Chapter Nineteen
Riverside Winter
Age 9, Wainiha River, 1974
A fog of sadness settles over our campsite next to the river. Pop drives into Hanalei early in the mornings so he can surf and then check what fix-it jobs he has at the little store. Mom cooks our morning oatmeal mush on the camp stove, then goes back to bed, and Bonny and I start at Hanalei School.
We pretend we came from one of the houses out by Knight’s, and are picked up by the school bus in front of the old red gas pumps by the Wainiha Store, which still isn’t open yet but is now always full of busy carpentry sounds.
Baby luaus are a big Hawaiian tradition left over from ancient times, because if a baby made it to one year old, it had a good chance of living to maturity. A baby luau is a time to celebrate and revel as much as a wedding. Henry Tai Hook, who lives next to the store, gives a baby luau for his first grandson and it’s the biggest Kauai has seen: there are five imu pigs, a hundred pounds of poi, a lake of beer, and five hundred rowdy guests from all over the island and Oahu who overrun Wainiha. The family takes boats out on the river, and they fall drunkenly out right next to our campsite, carousing and celebrating into the wee hours.
We’re invited, but not attending luaus or big local parties is our family policy. I wish we could go have fun too, but so far, the family policy of lying low has kept us out of trouble. Pop says that this is because, as the evening wears on, people drink too much, things turn aggressive, and someone usually thinks of scrapping with the haoles for entertainment. “Hate Haole Day” can be declared at any time.
Tita sticks by me at school. Her protection helps things go better, but Kira Yoshimura hasn’t forgotten that she hates me. She’s much the same: pretty and popular, and nasty as a small blue centipede. She gets my old nickname, Haole Crap, going again.
Bonny’s in first grade, and she makes friends with Kira’s little sister. Bonny’s easy nature and good looks keep her from having the hassles I’ve had. At least, that’s what I tell myself when I see Bonny playing with kids I can’t even talk to. That bad, jealous feeling I had at the ballet studio in La Jolla sometimes makes me mean to Bonny when we’re alone.
I keep an eye on Mom all of the time when we’re at the campsite on the river, worrying because she is still not right after losing Francis. She reads a lot on a wood pallet platform that Pop sets up next to a birdbath shrine with statues, crystals, and incense on the spot where Francis is buried. It’s comfortable out there, with a futon and a flowered bedspread.
Both Mom and Pop are reading the Bhagavad Gita and studying Yogananda’s teachings. “The wise do not indulge in grief for things that are inevitably changeable and evanescent. Those who always weep and complain that life is filled with bitter things reveal the narrowness of their minds.” Mom writes down her favorite Yogananda quotes on a curling 3x5 card tacked to the Java plum tree in our kitchen area.
Bon and I like to lie out there and read our books, too, with Macadamia Nut, Bonny’s kitten, tucked between us. We’re all comforted by Francis’s nearness in his spot under the Java plum tree.
One day a beautiful glossy black bird with a reddish breast and a white rump comes to the birdbath, which is usually just visited by mynahs, doves, and cardinals. The shama thrush, a songbird brought to Kauai in 1931 from Malaysia, makes his visits a regular thing, singing intricate melodies and sipping water above Francis’s grave. He even sings to Pop’s guitar music, enchanting us all.
“I think Francis’s spirit is visiting us,” Mom says. She and Pop decide that Francis has picked up an interim body in the form of the shama. I’m skeptical, but it seems to comfort them, so I don’t say anything.
Macadamia Nut has been a great cat at the camp. She stalks prey all day, keeping our campsite relatively mouse-free, and sleeps in the tent at night with Bonny and me. Now a sturdy, gray-striped teenager who goes everywhere with Bonny, Macadamia Nut draws a bead on Francis in his shama thrush bird form—and thus, Mom and Pop decide the kitten must go.
Pop takes Macadamia Nut to the dump, where all unwanted things end up. The dump is a cliff over a gulch, and people pull their cars up and throw stuff off the edge. They leave anything potentially useful on the side for others to pick through. We can also approach from below and look through the trash pile down in the gulch. Most of our household items have come from the “Hanalei Department Store.”
Bonny is as hysterical and devastated at losing her kitten as I was about Argos. I feel her pain as she screams and cries, totally unlike her usual mellow self. Our parents’ peace is disturbed, so they leave to go visit Ricky.
I hold Bon as she sobs. “Macadamia Nut’ll be okay. Someone will fall in love with her at the dump and take her home. She’s so pretty and sweet.”
This only makes Bonny cry harder. I can’t take the place of her kitten or make it okay, and she cries herself to sleep. But Macadamia Nut is a survivor, and I hope she’ll find a new home from someone who picks her up at the dump.
We continue pretending we aren’t living in the vacant lot, and with the lack of rentals, it’s fully December when we finally hear of a house to move into. We’re more than ready by then for a real house. Half a year in the campsite with mud, mosquitoes, and centipedes that keep trying to get into our relatively dry tents have worn down even Pop’s enthusiasm for outdoor living.
We get a commitment from some landlords that we can rent their house in Haena, a few miles away and a lot drier area—but there’s a catch. The owners, who live in Canada, come spend the summers in the house every year, and we have to agree to move out when they return. Next June seems like a lifetime away, so Pop agrees and we sign the lease.
The day before the house is available to move into, we’re awakened by a roar like a tidal wave coming in, and the stench of diesel fumes.
A backhoe and tractor are attacking our lot—the owner is clearing it for building!
The trees scream and moan, chainsaws wail, and our hidden homestead is exposed: shabby, mildewed, and tattered after a long six months. It feels like standing in front of a crowd, having your dress ripped off your body.
The shame and embarrassment are almost worse than the pain of what’s happening. Not quite, though, because the shama is gone. Our birdbath shrine is crushed, and Francis’s grave is annihilated as the Java plum tree falls, its leafy crown landing in the river.
Pop waves his arms and runs out to stop the tractors as they get close to the tents.
“We’ll have a house tomorrow,” he says. “Just let us pack up and sleep here tonight. Please.”
The local guys driving the tractors look down from the mach
ines like they feel bad when they see Bonny and me and Mom, clutching each other in front of the tents. I can tell they didn’t know we were there.
“We’ll go up to your tents today.” The foreman won’t look at us. “But you gotta be out tomorrow. Anything you leave, we goin’ tear down and clear out.”
We throw everything into our sleeping bags in panic, hauling it past the backhoe and tractor to Ricky’s house. As before, she takes us in without question.
“Someone should have told you those backhoes were coming!” she says. “They should have warned you, given you time to pack up.”
“Everyone knows we’re here on the river. Those assholes wanted to crush us in our tents just because they can. I swear they only stopped the tractors because of the kids,” Pop rages. “I can’t believe no one told us that lot was getting developed. Fucking off-island haoles!”
I agree with everything he’s saying, even while aware of the irony that we were once off-island haoles ourselves, and have been secretly trespassing on someone else’s land. Still, six months of living there has attached us to this little bend in the river. This wasn’t the way we wanted to leave: everything we own bundled in sheets and trash bags filling the Rambler, crashing at Ricky’s house on the floor.
The parents get drunk and high that night as Bonny, Malia, and I play Barbies in her room and pretend we’re okay—but I’ll never forget that moment of standing in front of a house made of cloth in my nightgown while a tractor advanced.
The minute we pack up the last of what we can carry, the tractors drive forward and our campsite is obliterated. There’s nothing to show that we were ever there, as they scrape away the mildewed tents and our kitchen area. Raw red gashes of track in the dirt wipe out our camouflage paths and secret glade, and a woodchipper’s scream follows us as we drive the Rambler, loaded to the ceiling, to our new rental.