Authors: Kristiana Kahakauwila
38) Take a drink when your cousin Mano, the one whose brother fights MMA, says he’ll see you out at Bowls. When he smiles his teeth glint against his deep brown skin. He’ll tell the other guys to let you catch some waves. He’ll tell the other guys you’re his cuz. He’ll take care of you, and you know what this means: You are no
longer some Honolulu hapa. You are a Napili. You have one more name, another branch of family to whom you belong. One more from which you can’t escape. Perhaps you are not your father after all. “Come see me now, yeah?” Mano says.
39) When you finally make up your mind to depart, do not take a drink. Do not let your dad take a drink. Hand him the keys to the car. He has had only three beers, maybe four, and is at least eight or nine behind the other men. Watch through the window as the resort condos of Poipu give way to Kauaʻi’s last remaining cane fields. Even in the dark, you can see the tendrils of smoke rising from where cane trash has been burning. The air smells acrid and sweet, like toasted orange rind. Flakes of ash fall and cling to your arms, sticky with a day’s worth of sweat. You smell like you’ve been crying. You smell like beer.
Understand that your grandmother is in heaven now, and heaven has fighting cocks and Heineken, poi and dried ahi, your uncles’ teasing and your aunties’ cooking and your cousins laughing with you when you talk. Heaven is them acting like this is where you belong, and if that’s what haole pastors call hell, then thank God you finally got here.
The photograph hung for years in the screened-in porch beside their family kitchen. Even in Sarah’s earliest recollections, the image is faded from sunlight: her father’s deep brown skin has taken on a grayish hue, the white plumeria around his neck appears to have withered and yellowed, and his black, wavy hair is frosted with white. Humidity has caused the photograph to curl from its backing and bubble slightly in its gilded frame, lending the impression that Keaka is turning toward her.
In the photograph, Sarah’s father is nineteen. He is a little thick in the middle, and his hair has already begun to withdraw from its original line like an army in retreat. But he is unmistakably handsome: his aliʻi nose, flat and wide—the nose of King Kalākaua’s line—flares slightly; his full lips are set in a mysterious smile; his chest is broad and hairless with dark, tight nipples. He is squinting slightly into the sun, and the photographer has caught him
at a moment of introspection, at an angle, so Sarah can see his left earlobe.
Sarah will spend many hours staring at the photograph while she waits for her father: waits for him to cook her oatmeal before school, to figure out her math homework so he can explain it to her, to come home for dinner, or dessert, or afterward, when it’s time to put her to bed. During these hours of waiting, she will memorize the lines of her father’s neck, the way he tilts his head to the side as if falling into the sunlight, the smile that teases his lips. She will study the curve of his eyebrows, thick like hers, and the bulge of his biceps, similar to her older brother’s. She will know the photograph as intimately as she knows her own self.
In later years, when she is in college on the mainland, and her roommates ask for a description of her parents—she has brought no pictures of them, only pictures of her high school friends—she will describe her father as he appeared in that photograph, at nineteen, before she was born.
Grace is five months pregnant with their first child when she photographs Keaka. They are at the beach and she is eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich when she notices how the afternoon light catches in his black hair and makes his skin appear to glow from within. She has a camera with her and the lei Keaka bought her that morning
when he stopped at the grocery store for more of the fruit preserves she likes.
She tosses him the lei. “Wear it,” she commands as she turns on the camera. He sticks out his tongue, and she snaps a picture. He smiles, slightly embarrassed at the attention, and she takes another.
“Das enough now,” he says. She lowers her right hand and rests it, still gripping the camera, on the beach blanket. She pretends to ignore him, picks up the sandwich with her left hand, and takes a bite. As Keaka turns to look at the ocean, Grace lifts the camera to her eye.
When at last Grace can slip into the white silk dress she has chosen as her wedding gown, she marries Keaka. John, their son, is already ten months old, and Grace’s breasts are heavy with milk. But her waist is almost back to its original size, her stomach relatively flat, and the silk bodice clings kindly to her curves.
The wedding is held on Wilhelmina Rise, at Grace’s parents’ house, on their spacious balcony, which is built into the steep incline of the hillside. The couple say their vows with Diamond Head and the high-rise hotels of Waikīkī as a backdrop, and when the pastor proclaims them man and wife, an ambulance siren can be heard wailing in the distance as if in celebration. Keaka’s aunties make all the food for the reception, even the three-layer mango wedding cake, and his uncles bring cases of
beer and raw oysters from Costco. Grace’s family brings wedding gifts: oversized boxes filled with silverware and porcelain plates.
In the living room, the Steelers’ game is on television, and the groomsmen have loosened their ties, found a cooler filled with beer, and camped out on the couches. Keaka is in the center, his tie off, his black dress shoes lost in the jumble of slippers on the front porch. John-Boy sleeps in his father’s arms while Grace greets her guests and thanks everyone for coming. She does not ask Keaka to join her in the tedium of hosting, but she resents his easy way of settling into her parents’ home with his friends, with their son, while she, alone, is left to kiss all the aunties and hug all the uncles and say “we” thank you and “we” love you and “we,” “we,” “we.”
For their wedding night, Grace and Keaka book a room at the Moana Surfrider Hotel in Waikīkī, where all the haole newlyweds vacation. They are alone for the first time in ten months: John-Boy is staying with Grace’s parents. Keaka is still a little drunk from the reception, but Grace insists on having a mai tai beneath the huge banyan tree that spreads its limbs over the hotel’s outdoor courtyard. They sit in silence while they wait for their drinks. They both watch the ocean, its white-tipped waves breaking loudly on the beach beside them, and then they drink the mai tais, also in silence. Grace can’t understand why, but she feels sad, and she misses her baby. Her breasts are
sore, even though she fed John-Boy before leaving her parents’ house, and she worries her milk is staining the lining of the silk wedding dress.
They finish their mai tais and charge the drinks to the room, and just as they are standing to walk back to the covered porch, a rainstorm blows out from Mānoa Valley. The water comes in sheets and the air smells of tuberose. Grace begins to cry, but Keaka doesn’t notice, for the rain is everywhere, and he’s already brushing her hair from her eyes and pulling her sopping dress over her head. They make love on the bed, their wet clothes in a pile on the beige carpet.
They conceive Sarah, and for the rest of her life Grace will associate the scent of tuberose with profound sadness.
Sometimes, after hula on Saturday mornings, Sarah’s dad picks her up from class and takes her to the beach. This has been their occasional tradition for three years now, since Sarah was seven. When she climbs into his truck, she slides across the bench seat and curls up next to him. She kisses his cheek and takes a deep breath. Her dad’s hair is still damp from a shower, and he smells clean, like Ivory soap. But beneath this Sarah can smell other scents—beer, cologne, pikake flower—she isn’t supposed to know.
Often when she emerges from the dim lights of her hula hālau, Sarah can see two figures outlined in the tinted
windows of the truck: Keaka and John-Boy. If this is the case, then when Sarah heaves herself into the truck she smells mildew and dirty feet, she smells boy.
These Saturday excursions are bittersweet. Keaka only takes them to the beach when he doesn’t make it for dinner the night before and is in deep trouble with their mom. He only takes them to the beach when he doesn’t want to be at home.
On the way to the ocean, they pick up Spam musubi from 7-Eleven or, if Sarah and John-Boy are really hungry, loco moco from Rainbow Drive-In. They sit in the truck, doors open to catch the breeze, and pop the egg yolks in their loco moco to watch the yellow bleed into the gravy and rice. Sarah doesn’t like the hamburger meat, so she divvies up the patties: one for her brother, one for her dad.
Keaka asks Sarah how hula class was and she describes the difficulty of making her knees lift when she tries to ʻuwehe or how, when she raises her arms to show the pali, she always forgets to tuck in her elbows. Her kumu says she makes a mountain with wings.
Her dad laughs, but not unkindly. “No worries, you remember next time,” he tells her cheerfully. “Why lif’ da knees so high? No need. Stay low to da ground.” His hints feel like guesses, and part of her questions how he knows to guide her like this, he who has never danced, but somehow his advice always turns out to be right.
At the beach, she changes into her swimsuit and lies
in the sand until she is so hot she wonders if the sand has come alive and crawled on top of her. Rivulets of sweat run down her arms and chest. When she can bear the heat no longer, she springs up, sand raining down on John-Boy, and races toward the water. She can hear John-Boy behind her and then their dad huffing a little with the sudden exertion. John-Boy is yelling at her that he’s going to win, and she yells back, “I’m almost there.”
But, as always, she hesitates at the water’s edge. John-Boy bolts past her, jumps into the water, and swims without fear toward the breaking waves. She feels her shoulders slump with disappointment. Behind her, Keaka sighs and says, “You beat me again.” She knows he’s only saying this to make her feel better, but she likes to hear it all the same. Good fathers know when to lie to their children.
While John-Boy can jump into the water without fear, Sarah will enter the ocean only if she is clinging to her dad’s back, arms wrapped tightly around his neck, and legs tucked beneath his arms. He lets the waves lash at him, splashing to either side of his body as the spray tickles her feet. She turned ten two months ago and knows she is getting too old for this sort of special treatment, but she feels safe clinging to her father’s back, hidden behind him. Once they are outside of the crash zone, he paddles, and she lets her legs float behind her. He tells her when to hold her breath because they are going to dive underwater, and he reminds her to start breathing again when they come up, as if she might forget. Underwater, the sun feels
cool and blue. Her father’s skin is warm as the sand. She can hear his heart beating, slow and steady.
One quiet Saturday afternoon in February, when the sun hangs lazily near the horizon, and the earth smells damp and green after a night of rain, Keaka pulls his truck in front of the hula studio, and he is not alone. At first, when Sarah comes running out the door and sees the shadowed outline of two people sitting behind the tinted glass, she assumes her brother’s baseball game has ended early. But then the passenger door swings open and a small Korean woman descends. She is wearing black sandals with heels and a flower-print dress belted fashionably around her waist. She is completely out of place at the hula school, where all the other women are wearing jeans or cotton shorts and T-shirts. Keaka steps out of the truck and motions toward the woman. “Sarah, this is my friend Joon.”
“I have heard so much about you.” Joon bends down to kiss Sarah on the cheek.
Sarah smiles shyly. Joon is beautiful, with a face shaped like a diamond: wide at the high cheekbones and angled at the chin. Her skin is the white of coconut milk and her lips are painted a brilliant, daring red. In Joon’s beauty and careful dress, her fashion and precise English, she is completely foreign. Sarah has never met a woman like this, and she wonders how Keaka might have come across her.
In the truck, seated between her father and Joon, Sarah asks, “You come with us to the beach, Auntie?”
Joon laughs, and her laughing is like a gasp. “No, not me. I burn too easily.”
“You like come Rainbow Drive-In then?”
Joon shakes her head. “Your dad is just dropping me off at home. I needed a ride.”
Sarah stops asking questions and, leaning slightly against Joon, stares out the window. Joon giggles and rests her hand on Sarah’s head. Keaka drives them to the back of Mānoa Valley, where a wet mist still sits on the finger-shaped leaves of mango and plumeria trees. When Joon exits the car, she leaves behind the scent of jasmine. She ascends a steep driveway and turns to wave. Sarah waves back eagerly.
Keaka drives next to Mānoa Park, where John-Boy’s Little League game is in its last inning. John-Boy has just come up to bat. He swings and misses on the first pitch, but on the second, he hits a line drive up left field that bounces off the tip of the third baseman’s glove. John-Boy stops at second base. “How you know Auntie Joon?” Sarah curls up beside her dad, and he drapes his arm around her shoulders.
“Work.”
“She looks like one fashion model. I like her belt.”
“Like one model,” Keaka repeats. Sarah feels her head bounce softly against her father’s chest as he chuckles. “But say, no tell yoa mom ’bout Auntie Joon. Dey no get along.”
Sarah is about to ask why they don’t get along when Robert Kenui, John-Boy’s best friend, hits a ball far into
right field. John-Boy starts running, and he is like a mongoose, speeding around the diamond. He rounds third, then heads for home. Keaka is yelling at him through the truck’s windshield. “Go, son. Go for it!”
Sarah is up in her seat, screaming, “Run, John.”
The right fielder throws the ball to first to get Robert out. The first baseman throws home. But John-Boy slides across home base just as the ball hits the catcher’s mitt. “Safe!” yells Keaka. “The boy is safe!” John-Boy’s team wins the game.
In the truck after the game John-Boy retells the story of sliding into home. “Because I made the sacrifice,” Robert interrupts. “Because of me.” Sarah and her brother are sharing a seat belt in the center of the bench while Robert has the passenger side. Keaka keeps asking the boys if they thought they were going to make it or not, and they keep changing their answer. “I thought I was,” says Robert, and then, later, “No, I knew I had to sacrifice for John-Boy to get home.”