by T W Neal
Back home at the Estate, we settle into a routine. Pop works, mostly doing the mowing while we do a lot of the other stuff around the edges. Mom’s belly gets bigger, and she spends a lot of time working the garden. The hundreds of barrows of cow manure Bon and I have hauled help her grow some of the biggest vegetables anyone in Hanalei has ever seen—her Chinese cabbages are the size of basketballs.
I babysit the Wilcox girls after school and other kids on weekends, and I hunt for magic mushrooms early in the morning before the sun can wither them. I stuff my future horse money away in an envelope hidden in my dresser.
In January, a month from when the baby’s coming, Mom says, “We have a surprise for you. There’s a Shetland pony for sale in Hanalei town, and he’s three hundred and fifty dollars with his tack. If you pay half, we can get him for your birthday.”
“Yes! YES!” I jump and clap my hands and do some cartwheels in front of the house. I can’t contain my excitement and let out those big loud feelings in whooping, hollering, and dancing around. I’ve actually saved a hundred and fifty dollars, and even though that’s not quite enough, Mom and Pop have scraped up their part, too.
The next day, when I get home from school, Keiki is standing in the pasture.
He’s a golden palomino with soulful brown eyes, and he swishes a thick white tail that’s a lot like Bonny’s long blonde hair. He’s too small to be intimidating and just the right size for me at my current height of four feet, eleven inches. I fall in love instantly.
“Pop brought him here for you.” Mom waddles after me in her maternity muumuu as I put rubber rain boots on with my shorts and bound into the pasture. “It wasn’t easy. Keiki was staked out next to the Laundromat, and your dad had to lead him all the way here, so you better tell him thanks.”
“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” I embrace Keiki’s shaggy neck. He swings his head and snaps teeth big as piano keys at me, making me jump back.
Despite all my horse fantasies and reading, I’ve only actually ridden a couple of times—trail rides with a guide at my grandparents’ house in Palm Springs. I feel a qualm of doubt. I don’t really know how to proceed, and Keiki seems a bit grumpy even if he’s cute.
“Where’s Pop?” Gigi and Grandpa Jim owned a ranch when Pop was growing up. He knows how to handle horses. “I want to thank him.”
“He had to go back to work.”
“Okay, I’ll ride over and find him.” I picture chasing Pop down on his drive mower from the back of my gorgeous palomino pony. “Where’s the tack? I want to ride!”
They’ve put the tack in a shed behind the house. I lug it to the fence: a great little Western saddle, bridle, and Mexican blanket. There’s even a rubber pail with brushes and a hoof pick. I’m grateful for the Basic Horsemanship book I’ve borrowed from the library. “If you can read, you can learn anything,” Mom always says, and so far, that’s been true.
Keiki’s staked out to a metal loop Pop pounded into a stump, and he steadily walks away from me as I approach, resulting in a comical circular chase until I wise up. Using a banana as bait, I get the halter on him and tie him to the fence. I’ll groom him first, clean his hooves, then figure out the tack.
That’s when I realize there might be a reason Keiki was for sale.
He stomps tiny hooves instead of letting me pick them up. He swishes his tail with mean accuracy when I brush his hindquarters, and gets me in the eye with the whiplike strands. Mom tries to provide ideas, but is too pregnant to really help, and what should have taken a few minutes turns into an hour of struggle. Finally, he’s tacked up as best I can figure out. Still wearing my shorts, T-shirt, and rubber rain boots, I put my foot in the stirrup and swing aboard. I’m on my pony! I lean forward and tighten my legs and give a little cluck, like the horsemanship book says.
Keiki just stands there.
I kick him, and say, “Giddyup,” which sounds as ridiculous as I thought it might.
No response.
“Maybe I should lead him.” Mom takes his bridle and he walks, very slowly, as if his joints hurt and he’s constipated. She opens the gate and leads him out of the pasture.
I’m less than thrilled with the experience so far. “Let go, Mom. I can handle it.”
The feeling is like being at the top of the boulder-strewn path at the forest house on my first two-wheeler, learning to ride a bike.
Only this bike won’t go.
Keiki stops again as soon as Mom lets go of the lead rope. I kick him, then whack his shoulder with the loose end of the reins. He puts his head down and begins eating grass. I pull on the reins to no avail.
“I’ll walk him a little more,” Mom says. I’m mortified to have my mom, the size of the Goodyear Blimp, leading us around.
“No, let me do it,” I say, but Keiki won’t move unless she leads him. We proceed at turtle speed along the fence.
Suddenly Keiki pricks his ears, and I feel a new vitality go through his sturdy body. “Let go, Mom! He’s ready!”
She lets go. Keiki picks up his walk to a trot, moving along the fence, his head up, mane blowing in the breeze. I bounce in the saddle, listing from side to side, but I’m riding my own pony!
We reach the end of the pasture fence. Ahead is the long driveway that leads to our house from the main road. I pull on the reins to turn Keiki, but he pays no attention.
He has spotted the road, and he remembers walking all the way here to this strange pasture with these strange people, and now he’s going home.
I know this as suddenly and totally as if I’d just had a Vulcan mind-meld with his tiny Shetland pea-brain.
“Whoa!” I yell, bracing my feet in the stirrups and pulling back—which the Basic Horsemanship book assures me is the proper procedure.
In reply to this, Keiki tucks his head and picks up speed, going from a trot to a canter to a full gallop down the long sandy driveway toward the main road. Mom clutches her belly, trying to run after us, yelling something. I’m too busy trying to stay on to listen.
Without slowing down or checking for cars, Keiki careens onto the two-lane asphalt road leading to Hanalei town, and gallops down the double yellow stripe in the middle of the road.
I hold onto the horn with both hands for dear life—and then, horror of horrors, discover I haven’t tightened the girth enough. By agonizing inches, the saddle begins to rotate to the side and me with it. Sensing weakness, the devil in palomino heads straight toward a telephone pole with intent to scrape me off.
By clutching his mane, I manage to haul the saddle back upright and only whack my leg on the telephone pole, but now Keiki has a plan to rid himself of me. He gallops straight for the next pole. I know I can’t make it past another one, and I let go of the mane. The saddle swings to the side and I’m dumped, rolling, onto the side of the road.
Keiki gallops on toward town, the saddle under his belly, his head up and ears pricked, his tail flying like an Arabian stallion.
I lie on the side of the road, winded, and finally sit up, checking for broken bones. A surfer friend of my parents, racks piled high with boards, stops his pickup truck in the road across from me. “You okay? That your pony I passed back there?”
Air’s still having a hard time getting into my lungs, so I just nod. The guy’s having a hard time keeping a straight face. “That pony sure knows how to run. Want a ride to go get him?” The guy’s chin is still twitching suspiciously.
I stand up, thinking over my options. There’s an oozing scrape on my leg from the pole, and I feel jangled and sore, but otherwise okay. Just then Mom pulls up with Bonny in the Rambler. She greets the guy in the truck. “Eh, howzit, Bob!” They chat as I get into the battered old sedan, head hanging with mortification and disappointment.
“That was awesome,” Bonny pokes me. “You really showed him who was boss.”
“You okay, hon?” Mom asks when Bob finally drives off.
“Yeah.” I fold my arms over my sore ribs and stare morosely out the window as we d
rive into town. Sure enough, Keiki is grazing unperturbed in the vacant lot next to the Laundromat.
I’ve lost my confidence about riding, so we put the saddle in the car’s trunk. I sit in the back seat holding Keiki’s reins out the window and lead him home that way as Mom drives slowly. Thankfully, there are no other cars on the road.
Later, I ride my bike over to Tita’s house. She tells me we should start Keiki out on a “lunge line,” and that I need riding lessons, but she’ll help me at first.
“Shetlands are brats. It sounds like he hasn’t been ridden in a while.” This pronouncement from my expert riding friend consoles me somewhat, but I soon discover that my beautiful little palomino is just as stubborn as I am.
Putting the saddle on, Keiki blows up his belly so the girth loosens later. Every time I mount, Keiki whips me with his tail or snaps his teeth, though I get good at jumping out of the way. His mouth is tougher than shoe leather, and my arms grow stringy with muscle from fighting for the bit. My riding choices are walking with an adult holding the lead line so he doesn’t run away, or perambulating the enclosed pasture, where he drags his feet as if every step is torture.
Eventually more confident, I take him outside the pasture alone. Twice more he runs away “home” to his vacant lot by the Laundromat, throwing me off in creative ways along the side of the road.
I’m not going to give up, no matter how battered, road rashed, or concussed I get, and eventually we come to something of an understanding. Using treats of papaya and chunks of coconut, I begin to win his black, treacherous heart.
One day I ride him across the street, fulfilling my fantasy of riding on the beach. All is glorious as we clop across the lawn to the beach. The ocean glimmers aqua perfection in the distance. The steep green mountains that define Hanalei are as glorious in the distance as a painted backdrop. A light breeze cools my brow and blows Keiki’s blond mane across my freckled hands, and the tightness of perfect happiness expands my chest.
The minute Keiki feels the warm sand of the beach on his hooves, he squats and pees immensely. I’m still chuckling at this, thinking how warm sand makes me feel the same way, when he takes a few more steps and drops to his knees.
“No, Keiki!” I shriek, and kick out of the stirrups, launching off his back just in time as he drops and rolls, almost crushing me.
He eventually gets up, grunting happily, and shakes the saddle loose. Sand packs every nook and cranny of the tooled leather. I tighten the girth, hop back on, and we proceed a little further. He tucks his head, a telltale sign trouble is ahead, and forges into the surf up to his neck, ignoring my yelling and pulling, soaking me and the saddle.
On the way out, he throws me off and rolls in the sand again. My tack is almost ruined and takes hours of cleaning and oiling to restore. I don’t take him to the beach anymore.
I’m determined to master him, though. Within a few months I can, with the aid of a sturdy crop and a heavy spade bit, pretty much ride him. He stops returning to the Laundromat, and now, when he runs away with me, he gallops to his feed bucket on the fence by our house.
I finally decide to ride him on the beach again, but bareback with my swimsuit on, now that I have him managed better. We cut across the yard of the house directly across the road from us, as I did last time. There’s a chain draped across their driveway but open grass on either side. With his telltale chin tuck, Keiki heads for the chain at a trot.
“Keiki, no!” I bellow, thinking he’s going to jump over it. I’ve fallen every way there is by now, and I know that a bareback wipeout will be painful in my suit on the neighbor’s asphalt driveway. With new arm muscles I’ve developed, I lever Keiki’s head to the side, trying to turn him, but it’s too late—he bolts for the chain with a surge and yanks his head free of my grip. Instead of jumping it, he dips his head under the chain and cleverly uses the heavy metal links to scrape me off. I land hard on my tailbone in the driveway.
Keiki gallops across the yard onto the beach, bucking and kicking up his heels, gloating over his victory. Reaching the beach, he drops to the sand for a good hard roll, grunting with pleasure. I get up, straighten my bathing suit, and walk carefully toward him.
“Hey boy,” I say in my best “good pony” voice. “Whoa, Keiki.”
He rolls an eye back at me and leaps up. He gallops away down the beach, tail high, farting with joy.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Hula Lessons
Pop's birthday in Hanalei
Age: 11, The Estate, Hanalei, Kauai, February 1976
Mom and Pop bring Anita Leilani home from the hospital. I’ve just turned eleven, and maternal instincts I never knew I had are activated by my adorable, ten-pound, green-eyed baby sister whose silver-blonde hair sticks straight up. I walk Anita around in the kitchen after she’s been fed, enjoying the warm, milky-smelling heft of her even when she cries, which sounds like a kitten mewing.
Mom had a rough time with the birth and lies around a lot during the day, keeping the same rhythms as Anita.
She calls her mother to tell her about Anita’s birth. Maga’s a tall, blue-eyed redhead with a big personality, and Mom says I got my red hair from her. Maga, her new husband Egidio, (formerly an Italian policeman, now a Fuller Brush salesman) and their teen daughters Patricia and Nancy, live in Santa Barbara, California.
“Your milk must be so rich,” I tell Mom. Bathing Anita in the big kitchen sink, we have to be careful to soap around all her pudgy rolls. She has one on the back of her neck that, as it gets a little sun on it, looks exactly like a marshmallow. I like to kiss it and breathe in her sweetness.
The baby seems to stress Pop out because she’s in their room and cries at night. He’s the least happy of us even though we share his work hours—withdrawn and grumpy, even after smoking pakalolo and drinking more than ever. I avoid him as much as possible, put in my ten hours a week, and try to stay quiet and help with the baby.
It’s all I can do. I really love it at the Estate, and I don’t want anything to change.
“We should understand and participate in Hawaiian culture more,” Mom’s decided. She’s made friends with some Hawaiian ladies over the years and has learned lauhala basket weaving, a lengthy process that involves harvesting the long, spiny hala leaves from the Dr. Seuss-like native trees, stripping off the thorns, drying and processing them, and finally the weaving itself.
We don’t have any Hawaiian language or customs taught in school, and Mom hears about some hula lessons in the church hall in Hanalei. She asks Gigi to pay for me and Bonny to go, and Gigi agrees and says she can’t wait to see us do hula on her next visit.
I’m excited arriving at the echoing wooden stage of the circa 1841 church hall where they hold the lessons. I heard shells are used in hula, and Bon and I each bring two large spotted cowries Pop found diving. We left them on an anthill for a month to get the innards properly cleaned out.
The kumu, teacher, is a sturdy Hawaiian woman with large brown eyes and the most amazing waterfall of shiny black hair threaded with gray like silver streamers. She tells us we need two cowries, a pair of uli`uli feathered rattles, a small ipu gourd and a pair of pu`ili bamboo sticks. We can buy what we don’t make ourselves from Kumu.
Kumu directs us into rows on the stage.
I’m the only haole girl in the group except for Bonny and Nicole, who’s tagged along at the last minute. I feel like a rice grain in a bowl of poi, and it’s not a good feeling. My tummy tightens with dread as I spot Kira Yoshimura, my old enemy, and she gives me stink eye. “Whatchu doing heah, Haole Crap?” she hisses.
Kumu opens with a short chant in vibrating Hawaiian so Kira has to shut up and pay attention. I awkwardly copy my neighbors as we begin a simple hula using the cowries to gesture, clicking them together.
“Pu pu
Hinu hinu
Pu pu
Hinu hinu e . . .”
I mess up, and Kira pinches the back of my arm, her favorite torture spot, making me yelp.
>
“Kira!” Kumu’s voice snaps Kira’s head around. “Since you already know these dances, why don’t you stand in front of the new girls so they can watch you.”
She puts Kira right in front, under her eagle eye, and I stand just behind her. Kira can’t give me humbug right in front of Kumu. I focus hard on getting my footwork and graceful hula hands just right, and Bonny, Nicole, and I muddle through the class.
After, when I’m putting our borrowed hula equipment away in the musty-smelling supply closet, Kira comes up from behind and pinches the back of my arm viciously. “Ow!” I jump and rub what’s already turning into a blood blister.
“You don’t belong here, fucking haole,” she snarls. “Go home to the mainland.” She’s extra mean because I’m on her turf, and Tita isn’t there to run interference.
“What’s your problem?” I turn to face her. “I nevah did notting to you.” I speak pidgin and try to stand taller—after all, I’m bigger than she is, and I was recently visited by an angel. I remember what Ginger said about bulls—yell loud, never run, and whack them if you can.
“You so stupid for ask dat!” Her dark eyes flash, her voice vibrates with rage. “Haole Crap!”
“You look more Japanese than Hawaiian to me, so no talk shit, Kira Yoshimura. I don’t hear any Hawaiian in your name, either.”
We give each other a long glare in that dark closet, and finally she whirls and stomps off. I don’t savor any victory—in fact, I know I’m in for it now. Kira’s greatest power has always been her ability to rally other kids to do her bidding.
The hula lessons become an ordeal because of Kira’s unrelenting campaign to drive me out. She trips me, pulls my hair, pinches me, and gets the other girls to do it, too.
In front of Kumu she’s all smiles. “You like me show you how?” She’s petite and lovely and does hula perfectly, and her voice drips sweet venom which Kumu misses.