by T W Neal
Social opportunities of any kind have become rare due to homeschooling and Pop’s paranoia, so I’m excited to go check out the love feast. We pile into the Rambler and go to the Bryans’ house first. The parents greet each other and light up joints on the porch to get in the mood for the evening’s festivities.
Their two boys, Kenny and Paul, are around the same age as Bonny and me. Kenny has a long craggy face that might be handsome when he’s older, and Paul looks like a younger, dark-haired Vinnie. Bonny and Paul go inside to investigate his toys, and Kenny and I go explore the hau bush woods behind their house.
We squeeze into the dense hau growth. Hau bush is more like a giant woody vine than an actual tree, twining in a dark, sidewise-growing mosquito-ridden mass that we climb through and over for something to do. I think of Mirkwood Forest from The Hobbit again. This would be a great place for giant spiders to live.
“What do you think of the love feasts?” I ask. “Everybody keeps their clothes on, right?” I worry about having to see a lot of icky penises and boobs. Kenny shrugs. I can tell he’s embarrassed by his parents’ religion by the way his neck gets red. “It’s okay. The chanting’s boring.”
“Chanting?”
“You know. Krishna, Krishna, Hare Hare, Rama Rama. It goes on a long time.”
Now I know why the parents are getting stoned, and wish I could too. I’ve breathed enough secondhand smoke to know it makes you mellow.
Back at the house, Kenny’s mom gives Bonny and me tulsi bead necklaces, which we drape around our necks for the feast. “You chant the Hare Krishna using the beads,” she says. “One bead per chant.”
“I know how to do that. It’s like the rosary.”
Kenny’s mom pinches her mouth tight, but nods.
Gigi’s Catholic, and showed me how a rosary works. You say Hail Mary full of grace, deliver us on each jet bead, and the Lord’s Prayer when you get to the silver cross with the agonized Jesus on it. The tulsi beads look like the same idea to me.
We drive to the newly built Temple. The grounds are still muddy and trashed from bulldozing, and the newly planted palms and plumeria trees list about trying to get their roots settled. We meet in an open tent for a lecture—sitting cross-legged, we listen to the Krishna guru talk about oneness and karma and the interconnected nature of all things. I’m mildly interested, particularly in karma and how it deals with bullies. After that, they light bowls of incense and the chanting begins.
“Hare Krishna, hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, hare, hare. Hare Rama, hare Rama, Rama, Rama, hare hare . . .” It goes on a very long time.
I glance over at Kenny and catch his eye. We almost burst out giggling, and Mom elbows me. I try to look spiritual and close my eyes and chant with the tulsi bead necklace like I’m supposed to.
Finally, the food. We were all supposed to bring something, so Mom brought one of her famous salads: veggies from our garden chopped up fine and topped with a pouf of homegrown alfalfa sprouts in a big wooden bowl.
We rearrange ourselves in a big circle on the lauhala matting floor of the tent. Orange-robed monks, just regular haole guys from what I can tell but with shaved heads, lay banana leaves down the center of the circle, and set the food, in bowls, on the leaves.
“Om. Shanti shanti, Om,” everyone chants. Then we fold our hands and bow to each other, saying, “Namaste.”
Big smiles everywhere. It really does feel loving. This must be the “love” part of the “love feast.”
I’m starved by then. All the potluck food is in a row of bowls with serving spoons, and we’re each given a smaller bowl but no utensils. “We eat with our fingers,” Kenny whispers, miming a three-fingered scooping gesture.
The Hawaiians eat that way too, but with them, it’s real—it’s their culture. This seems silly, almost pretentious, like trying too hard to be exotic. I fiddle with my beads and keep my sassy mouth shut.
The adults take the food out of the center and get it circulating. We serve hummus, chuppattis, couscous, beans, guacamole, steamed veggies, and Mom’s salad into our bowls. I’m so hungry I don’t mind the finger food thing even though it’s messy, and discover that someone has brought bowls of clear water, set near every two or three people, to rinse our fingers with. After the meal, the adults do meditation and we kids are allowed to run around.
Kenny and I explore the grounds where the Temple will be, and put flower and leaf offerings in front of the various blue, mauve, and many-armed statues sprinkling the grounds. I’m soon annoyed by all the mosquitoes and go hang out in the meditation area because they have mosquito punks lit. The smoke from these mosquito retardants swirls around, mixing with sandalwood incense and forming a strange odor—but it does keep the skeets away.
I endure about ten minutes of meditating before Anita, who’s been mellow in a backpack on Pop’s back, begins to fuss and it’s finally time to go.
On the way home in the Rambler, Mom says, “I’m not sure about the Krishnas. Let’s try the Bahá'ís next. We’ll know where we’re supposed to be when we find it.”
I’m not sure what religion my angel was from, and I’m still looking, too.
I need money for my 4-H horse addiction, and so advertise babysitting services around town with handwritten flyers: “Responsible childcare in your home by a big sister—extra fun for kids, and I’ll tidy your house, too!” Mom tells her friends, and my little business gets off the ground. If the family’s houses are in Hanalei town, I ride to them on my bike, and if they’re further away they pick me up in front of the Estate in their cars.
I enjoy babysitting for the most part, and have a knack with kids from babysitting Anita and playing with younger kids so much. I don’t tell the parents I’m only eleven; with my hair braided and my glasses on, I look at least thirteen or maybe fourteen. I build up a list of “regulars” and they rave because I not only play with their kids, but I wash their dishes and run the vacuum around, too. “Find a way to add value to whatever you do and people will keep coming back,” Grandpa Jim would say with his bristly eyebrows aquiver at imparting one of his business gems.
I get a call from a new family, far enough away that the dad picks me up. They have a party to go to. After me and the kids, aged two and four, wave the parents off, we make forts and boxed Mac & Cheese for dinner (which I love for its forbidden processed orange fakeness), play Candy Land, take a bath, read stories, and go to bed.
After the kids are in bed, I indulge in the real reason I like babysitting.
I like to find out all about my clients—that curiosity I’ve always had has only gotten stronger. I want to know everything about how other people live their lives. I begin my investigations in the kitchen, sampling and inventorying their food choices. This family is loaded with badforyou junk; I snack on Cheez-Its, chocolate chip cookies, and pork rinds.
After bingeing carefully on food that won’t be missed, I move on to the bathroom cupboards. They have some multi-vitamins and sleeping pills, and an off-brand of toothpaste and floss. For a well-off family, they’re skimping on the essentials.
The mom’s diaphragm, stored in a shell-shaped pink case in the bathroom cabinet, is missing. That means she’s planning to have sex tonight, probably after the dad takes me home. Mom showed me her diaphragm one time, but not the gel that goes with it. I squeeze a bit of the spermicide out of a wrinkled tube and rub it between my fingers, smelling it.
It smells like Windex. Gross.
I try to imagine what goes on with this thing during sex: you fold the springy dome loaded with goo in half and shove it up into your vagina, so some man can stick his penis in there and hose it all down with sperm. Mom’s explained it to me in agonizingly mortifying detail. “Sex is a beautiful act between people who love each other,” Mom says. I’ve caught my parents in that act twice and didn’t see the beauty.
On to the bedroom I go. Closets are jam-packed with clothes, a lot of dark heavy garments apparently left over from the Mainland, because they’ll never w
ear all that wool and quilted down over here. A row of leather shoes, mildewing in the Hanalei damp, attest to the fact that this haole family hasn’t yet fully adjusted to life in Hawaii.
I save the best for last—the bedside tables. In the drawer on the mom’s side, a vibrator that looks like a pink flashlight and a copy of what I’ve already read, Fear of Flying. On dad’s side, a Penthouse and a few oddly shaped implements I suspect are sex toys, and a black leather case.
The case looks important. I sit down, put in on my knees, and press the little catch with a keyhole in it. It pops open, and lying in the foam is a revolver with a black plastic grip. I take it out. It’s heavy and smells like machine oil. It’s probably not loaded because there’s a row of bullets sitting in a channel in the foam, but I feel like I’ve been naughty just by touching it. I put the gun back, close the case, and put it away. I curl up to read Penthouse with a bag of Cheez-Its until the parents come home.
I hear the crunching of the car on the gravel a long way off, and put the magazine and snacks away in plenty of time. I’m washing the dishes, looking virtuous, when the couple comes rolling in.
“Ready for a ride home, cutie pie?” the dad says. Oh great. It’s gonna be one of those. I look at the mom to intervene, but she’s already staggering down the hallway.
The dad weaves as we drive, bumping from side to side, and thankfully the road is deserted. I hold onto the sissy handle and check my seatbelt, praying to get home without ending up against a coconut tree.
“Are you a natural redhead?” he asks with a grin. “I love redheads.”
“What do you mean?”
“Does the carpet match the drapes?”
I don’t know what he’s trying to say, but I bet it’s something nasty. I’ve seen which Penthouse pictures he folds the corners down on. “I don’t dye my hair, no.”
“How old are you?” He puts his hand on my leg.
I take his hand off and put it back in his lap. “Eleven.”
“Jesus!” he exclaims. “I thought you were older.”
“Most people think I’m thirteen.”
He doesn’t reply to that.
At our driveway, he peels off a twenty, way too much money. I don’t offer change, just stuff it in my pocket and trot off into the darkness, mentally striking their name off my list of clients. A dad like that might be harder to fend off next time.
With the success of my babysitting business, I’m able to pay for the food for Keiki and fees for the gymkhana and riding classes I take. I even buy a goat, a registered Toggenburg named Sarah. Pop helps me fence a little pen in the corner of the yard, and we build a stall for her when it rains. Sarah becomes very attached to me and follows me around like a puppy, bleating whenever I leave her.
It also feels good to have money to loan the family when we come up short at the end of the month. They always pay me back, and I like helping.
Pop’s still drinking too much, and his dark mood comes and goes. It seems like I’m always on the verge of setting him off these days—everything I do annoys him. Now that I’m not in school, Pop thinks the best use of my time is helping with his work hours.
I totally get why Pop hates his job. I hate it too. Except for the drive mower, which I enjoy, it’s boring. There is no easier way to do some things, which is so frustrating, and it’s physically tiring. I rake up big, paddlelike kamani leaves from the lawn of the beach house that’s a part of the Estate, doing yet another hour of yard work for some comment he thought was sassy. The kamani leaves, for instance, are each the size of a dinner plate and the shape and heaviness make them hard to rake. We can’t use them on Mom’s mulch pile because they take too long to break down, so I’m stuck raking them, then loading them into a wheelbarrow and pushing it across hundreds of yards of lawn out to the pasture, where I dump them with the other non-composting yard waste into a giant pile with coconuts, palm fronds, and tree branches that also don’t break down easily.
I usually take Sarah with me to do my yard work. Sarah is curious and interested in everything. Her yellow goat eyes with their slit pupils are kind of spooky, but she can’t help that. She likes to nibble on my hair, and she has silky lips that feel like gentle tickly kisses. No matter what I’m doing, if Sarah’s along it’s more fun. I get lonely in my corner of the giant yard, working, but she’s good company.
Bonny’s been bitten and thrown enough by Keiki to decide she doesn’t want him now that I’ve outgrown him, so we find a new home for my beloved Shetland. A family buys him who has a boy a little younger than Bonny. They promise to take good care of him, and I give him a goodbye ride around the pasture without saddle or bridle—he listens to me perfectly, but now my feet dangle well below his knees. He’s been a great first pony, and I’m confident on bigger horses now because of the hard knocks Keiki gave me when we first started out.
I hug him and whisper “I love you” in his fuzzy ear, and they cart him off in a rented trailer. I mope for days, even though I knew it was time.
Summer rolls around, and Gigi has agreed to pay for Yoga Camp at the Self-Realization Fellowship compound.
“Grease up your jeweled cork!” Pop chortles, in a good mood at the prospect of getting rid of me for a while. I fly alone to California, enjoying extra macadamia nut packets and a silver United Airlines pin from the stewardesses watching me through plane changes.
Gigi enfolds me in her powdered-chemical-flowers hug at the airport, and after that I press my cheek against Grandpa’s golf-sweatered chest. He’s a big man, well over six feet, and his two-tone loafers are enormous.
“Let’s get you outfitted.” Gigi jingles her gold bracelets with anticipation as we get into Grandpa’s black Cadillac.
“I’m fine, Gigi, I have the clothes you bought when I came for the specialist.”’
She eyeballs me. “We’ll start at JCPenney’s.”
Gigi’s shopping trips, mandatory at every visit, have begun to be agonizing. She brings ruffly, scratchy, and over bright clothes to my dressing room, loading me up in a never-ending stream until I start saying yes just to get it over with—and then, she circles around when the clothes are on, saying, “Hmm,” and patting my hips.
“You need a bra,” she tells me, pinching my hip as she adjusts the back waistband of the pants, her way of telling me she thinks I’m getting fat.
“No,” I say, crossing my arms over my still-flat chest—and feeling the hard, painful nubs that have begun to poke out my T-shirts.
“Yes. Your—um.” She gestures. “They’re visible.” Gigi would never say nipple.
In the end I leave Penney’s with a training bra, several pairs of itchy polyester “slacks,” and a couple of ruffled blouses. I do manage to get one pair of denim shorts and a T-shirt out of it, which are the compromise items I get to keep for letting her pick the rest.
We have a “lady lesson” dinner for old times’ sake at the Country Club, complete with a review of Grandpa’s achievements in front of his portrait, but I’ve memorized my manners and don’t need any reminders. As a reward, I’m allowed a trip to the dessert table.
I’m stocking up for asceticism at yoga camp and come back with a heap of sugary sweets that makes even Grandpa’s brows go up. He pats my wrist in rare approval, shutting down Gigi’s protests. “Girl’s fine the way she is. Let her eat a few desserts.”
The next day, my grandparents, looking a little uncertain, drive the Cadillac into the Self-Realization Temple between entrance pillars topped with giant golden lotuses. I say goodbye for a week, and walk off with a saffron-robed woman who takes me to a large, airy dormitory.
The grounds are huge, and the other kids are surprisingly normal. I even like the yoga and meditation classes, and especially the silent “self-reflection time” we have in the afternoon when we are supposed to journal and think about things. I like journaling and thinking about things. Sitting on my little red pillow in the meditation room, I cogitate on what’s been happening in my life.
I
t feels like the tidal wave I’ve feared has engulfed me with feelings—powerful feelings that buffet me about like the waves I like to surf in Hanalei Bay.
Anger at the kids at school who bullied me or stood by watching while it went on. Jealousy of how things are easier for Bonny, and that she’s prettier. Jealousy of the Big House kids, and all they have, like Nicole’s beautiful horse, Huni, who’s getting fat from not being ridden. Fear of what’s happening to our family as Pop gets more unpredictable and Mom’s wrapped up in the baby.
In fact, there isn’t much going on in my life that makes me happy except riding and my goat, Sarah.
The meditation teacher, a beautiful older Indian lady, wears a sari and a dot on her forehead. She tells us to let go and observe thoughts and feelings, to distance ourselves from them. Her twittering, birdlike voice is enhanced by her accent. “Yogananda has said, ‘If you permit your thoughts to dwell on evil, you yourself will become ugly. Look only for the good in everything so you absorb the quality of beauty.’”
This truth spreads through me like a tea bag in hot water, releasing color and flavor. I look out at the glass-framed vista of the gardens with the ocean in the distance. I feel the beauty soaking in—and Kauai is the most beautiful place of all.
But I already carry ugliness inside of me—ugliness that’s been put on me and done to me, and now is a part of me. I’m mean, jealous, selfish, greedy. Ugly.
I don’t know what’s going to happen in my life, to my family. I’m still just a kid, and I can’t control anything. I can’t stay ahead of what’s coming, prepare for it, or figure it out. But I can be in this moment, right now, and fully experience it.
Through meditation practice, I learn to sit quietly in my head, tolerate my dark feelings, and be okay in spite of them. I learn that exercise and being in nature help me feel better. And I begin to write as a way to sort it all out, using words to understand myself and the world through journaling.