| | Prologue
My haole mother was blessed with optimism. She believed in the endless possibilities of things and the idea you could achieve anything if you loved doing it. The cup was half full. Because she loved to sing and dance, she was convinced she would someday go to Broadway and land a role in a musical. This dream remained despite my father's chidings it would never happen. Her dream would never die because it had become a life preserver that buoyed up her spirits whenever it felt as though she was drowning in the responsibilities of marriage and motherhood. I was three when she took me out to our driveway on Oahu, pointed at the rising sun and said, "That's where I'm going."
"I go too," I said.
"You can't."
"Please?"
She tapped frantically on the blacktop and I did my best to keep up. I was sure we were helping the sun break over the coconut trees on Pueo Street. My hapa haole father came out and told us to get the hell back inside before he phoned the crazy house in Kaneohe.
My mother was the first postwar Miss Massachusetts, a statuesque blonde who wowed the Faneuil Hall judges with her song-and-tap interpretation of Cole Porter's "Begin the Beguine." I grew up believing she was touched by magic, having witnessed her winning every contest on our first and only cruise to Disneyland, from Best Muumuu to Best Hat & Gown to First Place in the talent show. When fellow passengers on the SS Lurline discovered my older brother Ben and I were the sons of the green-eyed blonde from Boston, they sent over round after round of Shirley Temples. We received invitations to dine at the captain's table and had impromptu hors d'oeuvres with the heirs to the Clorox fortune. When the first mate suggested my mother accompany him to a matinee of "Splendor In the Grass," my father told him he'd better watch it before he got a fat lip. The first mate backed off. A black steward called Ben and me "The Last of the Mohicans" upon discovering Ben had used the bathroom sink for number two. Despite the fact our cabin was not equipped with a latrine, my mother used that steward's comment against us to gain her freedom.
"That steward had a point, Norm," my mother said upon our return from Disneyland.
"Point about what, Mary?" asked my father.
"The boys are Mohicans. They're wearing me out."
"I'll fix their wagons," he said.
Ben and I were banished to Moloka'i, where we spent the rest of that summer and every summer thereafter with my father's mother, a no-nonsense woman from Honolulu who'd adapted to the rigors of country life. One of my father's earliest memories was watching his mother rope cows on the beach at Pukoo Harbor. She'd drag the cows out one by one until the horse beneath her was swimming and pulling a tethered cow. A ship anchored in the harbor dropped its winch and two Hawaiian men treading water secured a girth around the cow's belly while she returned to shore. Sharks came out of the deep water and circled the cows—most lost interest after the cows were hoisted into the air. But a few went for her horse.
That's when she pulled her rifle.
Gramma
From Maui, its closest neighbor, Moloka'i appears hostile. Its rugged hump rises out of the sea. No beaches are visible. It seems the island is newly formed. Instead of friendly green and red rectangles marking the pine, sugar and taro fields like those on Maui, Moloka'i is a shadow island of dark browns and viridian. There are no lights at night, only a black mountain blocking out the stars. It makes you think only a few live there and that the few don't want visitors. Kamaainas know Moloka'i as The Lonely Island because it is home to only five thousand people. To the Hawaiians, it was The Kahuna Island. Kamehameha feared Moloka'i because of its kahunas, medicine men and witch doctors who worshipped the god Lono. Kamehameha knew the kahunas could not only empower their Rainbow Warriors with superhuman strength but raise an army of the dead. Still, Kamehameha had guns and canons. He took the island after a fierce battle and spent a year hardening his troops in the foothills of Moloka'i. Kahunas were called in to empower Kamehameha's men before he launched his double-hulled war canoes against the forces on Oahu.
Moloka'i is an island of contrasts. Boot-shaped, it is dry and flat in the west and wet and mountainous in the east. It's coast is primitive—there are sea cliffs with five hundred foot drops. Moloka'i is where my grandmother settled with Chipper Daniels, her third lover and first try at marriage. I can imagine her initial trepidation as the ferry boat from Honolulu crossed Moloka'i Channel and she saw waves crashing on lava as jagged as knives. But she was determined to make her marriage work, no matter what the cost. My father, the product of a love affair with an Englishman, did not accompany his mother to Moloka'i. His grandmother on Oahu took him because Chipper refused to raise a bastard.
My father sent Ben and me over every summer after my mother said we were Mohicans. He figured that, since he hadn't been raised by his mother, the least she could do was tolerate us three months of the year. As a four-year-old, I sat in the window seat of a Hawaiian Airlines plane drinking pineapple juice and admired the Lego-like construction of Waikiki. Then came the deep blues of the channel separating Oahu from Moloka'i. Ben and I landed on a desolate strip on the west end and a lady wearing cowboy boots, jeans, palaka blouse and a lauhala hat was waiting. I was terrified of this old woman we came to know as "Gramma." Her face was a road map of wrinkles and she did nothing to disguise it. She had thin lips, a stern expression and smelled like tobacco. Her face was white and her dark eyes slanted. She drove us in a red Jeep without doors through the pineapple fields and along the coast through a forest where the wind howled and the kiawe trees moaned. She said we didn't look like brothers at all because Ben had our mother's blond hair and green eyes while I had the dark hair and eyes of our father. I could tell she didn't like my mother by the way she glared at Ben.
"Hope yah kids can tie yoah shoes," she said on that first drive.
I looked at Ben and we both nodded.
"Hope yah kids know how tah crap."
We nodded again.
"Good boys."
Gramma spoke a type of creole common on Moloka'i. Any tourist might think he or she had landed in Baton Rouge or New Orleans upon disembarking and mingling with the locals. The main difference between the two dialects was that Gramma interspersed her language with Hawaiian words instead of the French spoken in Louisiana. The decision to use a Hawaiian word at any given moment was up to the speaker and this kept the dialogue lively as well as preserving the Hawaiian language. If a Hawaiian word was unknown to the listener, it didn't take long to figure out its meaning—the speaker's inflection and dramatics made that clear. When Gramma called Ben a puhi'u the first time, I knew it wasn't a compliment. The more Hawaiian you knew, the more you were considered part of the aina, the land. Therefore, the listener was always trying to mine new Hawaiian words out of the speaker. Old-timers often began in creole and ended up speaking entirely in Hawaiian. The Hawaiian language floated in a gumbo of English with a pinch and a dash of Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese and Tagalog; the mix of languages reflected the various waves of immigrants brought in to work the pineapple fields. But like cream, Hawaiian words were treasured and they floated at the top of the linguistic broth. The creole spoken on Moloka'i knew its roots and paid its respects accordingly.
* * *
Gramma's house sat on a bluff overlooking the ocean. It had been built on stilts as a precaution against the tides and it was one of the few homes left after the tsunami struck on April Fool's Day in 1946. "Full ah sand, limu an' fish," she told us, "but still standin'." She'd decorated it with a mix of Asian art and gifts from the ocean, everything from brush paintings to conch shells to green glass balls that had broken free of their nets in the Sea of Japan. There were deer heads mounted on the walls and a bookshelf loaded with shells, poi pounders and ulu stones. Some of the rooms had a musty odor but when the storm windows were opened out on the lanai, the clean smell of the ocean flooded through the house.
That first night we shared a big wide bed called a pune'e. Gramma had the outside. Ben had the wall. I slept in the middle. It was hard getting to sleep because Ben was kicking me in his sleep and Gramma was snoring. I kept an eye on an alarm clock shaped like Big Ben on the nightstand. A little after midnight, someone knocked at the window above our pune'e.
"Brownie," a voice called, "lemmee in!"
I could see a big puppet behind the glass. Its head hid the moon. The face was dark and the body wobbled. When we didn't answer, the big puppet said, "Ran off dah bridge at Pukoo, Brownie. Yah gottah tow me out."
"Go home, Uncle Chipper, go home!" Gramma had us say. Fear turned Ben and me into a pleading chorus. We must have chanted that directive ten times. Finally, he gave up and stumbled home, his form absorbed in a sea of shadows.
We watched Gramma pull on her jeans in the moonlight.
"Whacha doing?" Ben asked her.
Gramma slid back the bolt on the front door and opened it. She held a coil of rope. "Don't yah boys let a soul in, undahstan'?"
"Yes, Gramma," he said.
"Goin' tah help yoah Uncle Chippah."
She shut the door. Her Jeep started and it hurled blinding spears of light through the house. Ben and I knelt on the pune'e and watched the lights swing away and cut deep paths into the flatlands.
"Who's Uncle Chipper?" I asked Ben.
"Gramma's old husband."
"Where does he live?"
"In the swamp," Ben answered.
The next night, Ben and I tossed and turned on the pune'e because we were expecting another visit by Uncle Chipper. Gramma switched on the light and popped out her teeth. She said the teeth had a mind of their own and they'd chew us up if we didn't fall sleep. I was amazed that this old woman had the power to unlock body parts. It wasn't until I saw her teeth and pink gums in a glass of bubbling water that I figured out her trick. I was so scared she might find out I couldn't tie my Keds that I paid Ben a penny every day to do it for me. When I ran out of pennies, he started a tab by carving notches into a piece of driftwood.
"And I want interest," he said as he carved.
"What's that?" I asked.
"Extra money for not paying up now."
My big brother was no stranger to loot. Back on Oahu, he'd made it a habit to leave our table at Pat's at Punalu'u Restaurant to go wading for coins in their wishing well. He always came back to the table stinking of algae water but with a bulge in his pocket and a smile on his face. I wondered what happened to the wishes if the money wished on was stolen. My brother was the Thief of Wishes. He used most of the money to bribe boys in Kahala not to be my friend. These bribes began after my father beat Ben for throwing sand in my eyes. After I'd punched Doug Henke in the nose for ganging up on me with Ben, Doug admitted he liked me better than Ben but that it didn't pay. When he suggested we could mend our friendship by paying him more than Ben's fifty-cents-per-week, I punched him in the nose again.
* * *
Breakfast meant eating on the stainless steel counter in Gramma's narrow kitchen. She cooked slabs of bacon in her skillet, cracked eggs on the skillet's side and dropped them into hot bacon grease. They popped and crackled. I felt hungry and then sick to my stomach. There were two forks over two paper napkins on the counter. Ben sat down on a chair beside the wall and I pulled out the stool attached to the counter. A black phone hung on the wall. tacked next to the phone was an Ancient Hawaiian Moon Calendar that noted the best days to fish and plant; there were also warnings of visits by ghosts, treacherous seas and what not to bring on a boat if you wanted to catch fish—bringing bananas meant you'd return empty handed and guaranteed there'd be no births in your family for at least a year. On the counter was a bottle of Kikoman Soy Sauce, a jar of Hawaiian rock salt and a bowl of red chili peppers.
"Sunny side up ah down?" Gramma asked.
"Sunny what?" Ben asked.
Gramma frowned. "Doesn't yoah muthah cook eggs?"
Ben and I shook our heads.
"Whacha eat foah breakfast?"
"Frosted Flakes," Ben said.
I raised my fork. "Sugar Pops!"
"Yoah not gettin' that up heah."
"You can buy it anywhere," Ben said.
"I'm not feedin' yah that sissy crap," she said. "When yah come tah Moloka'i, yah eat what men eat." She lifted the greasy eggs with a spatula, plopped them on blue plastic plates and put a plate in front of each of us. Then came bacon and slabs of buttered toast. The fat on the bacon was still sizzling and the toast was burnt. "Feed yoah faces," she said.
"Any jam?" Ben asked.
"Buttah's plenny. Yoah damn lucky tah get buttah."
I looked down and saw what looked like mucus encircling a bright yellow eye.
"Go on," Gramma said, "that's what paniolos at Pu'u O Hoku Ranch eat tah get through the day."
I picked up my fork and so did Ben. I poked the yellow and it oozed out over the mucus and spread to the crusty edges of the white.
"When I get back," Gramma said, "those bloody eggs bettah be gone."
The second Gramma left the kitchen, Ben grabbed his egg and slipped it into the pocket of his jeans. "Yummy," he said and munched on a piece of bacon.
I did the same.
Gramma returned to the kitchen. She put her hands on her hips and looked at our plates. "Finished?"
We nodded.
"What 'bout that toast? Yah kids don't eat toast?"
"No, thank-you," I said.
"Wan' Gramma tah fix yah some moah eggs? Got plenny ah grease."
Ben patted his belly. "I'm stuffed."
"Me too," I said.
"Well, get out an' shovel manuah foah my garden," she said. "Then yah can go fishin'."
Every morning for a week Gramma made us eggs sunny side up and every morning we stuffed them into our pockets. But for some reason, we forgot to empty them. I went one step farther by picking beetles out of the horse manure we were supposed to clear from the fields and then stuck the beetles in with the eggs. The stink of manure mixed with the smell of rotting eggs. I loved bugs and thought my pockets were the best place to keep them.
"Christ," I heard Gramma say from the wash room while I wheelbarrowed manure. "Damn these kids!"
Ben dropped his shovel. "Oh, oh, Spaghetti-Os."
We ran over to the wash room and peeked in through the space between the double doors. I looked past the garbage cans and the red Toro mower that Gramma rode. I saw her emptying my pockets—the linings were yellow and black beetles fell out with the eggs. She squashed the beetles against the cement floor with her boots. "Christmas!"
"Let's finish the manure," Ben said, "then we can go fishing."
I nodded.
"They're gettin' it!" Gramma said. "Believe me, Al!"
"Let's go fishing now," Ben said.
We ran from the wash room and grabbed our bamboo poles.
* * *
My mother rarely visited us on Moloka'i. If she did, it was only for a weekend. She was a city girl who found country life crude and uncivilized. She hated horses, dogs and even the beach. Her idea of roughing it was eating egg salad sandwiches on park benches while watching swan boats glide by on the Charles River. She had been raised to be a proper lady but Moloka'i brought out the worst in her. She'd told Ben and me that the island was full of dark, uneducated people. "No wonder there's a leper colony," she'd said. Ben hated it whenever she came up. He didn't mind so much that she disliked the island; what got him mad was the way she always told Gramma how much she liked the ranch and loved patting the horses. Ben punished my mother by throwing toads at her whenever our father wasn't around. She always screamed and threatened to tell. Then Ben planted a scorpion in her shoe. When Ben walked away, I tipped over the shoe and smashed the scorpion.
My father bought my mother a beach umbrella because she complained about the intensity of the Moloka'i sun.
"Yoah muthah's got 'spensive tastes," Gramma said while my mother was camped under the umbrella.
"She always orders lobster at Fisherman's Wharf," Ben said.
Gramma winced. "I'll bet."
"She loves dresses," I added.
"Suah," Gramma said, "spendin' all yoah poah fathah's money."
"She calls you 'that ignorant woman'," Ben told her.
"Yaat!" Gramma replied.
Gramma believed my parents' relationship was based on money and that the marital waters were calm since my father was a good provider. Ben and I quit telling her about the storms that swept through our house back on Oahu because she'd end up blaming us for causing them. In Honolulu, love ebbed and flowed like a crazy tide. The equation that best defined my parents was take-no-prisoners followed by an all's forgiven truce. It was as if they were using the passion of war to reaffirm their vows of love. The first offer of peace came when my father dropped to his hands and knees in the kitchen. "Jesus preached forgiveness," he'd say. It wouldn't be long before my mother caved in. She was after all a staunch Roman Catholic and denying a principle teaching of the Church would be the equivalent of sacrilege. My father exploited her devotion to Jesus religiously. If that angle was wearing thin, he'd try the "after-all-we've-been-through-together" plea while emphasizing the point that battles between husband and wife were not only perfectly normal, but the foundation for compassion and understanding. My father told me that it was the quiet marriages that ended in divorce because fighting meant there was great communication. If a second war broke out within a week of their making up, my mother would run out into the middle of Pueo Street and deliver her standard line of, "He's murdering me, he's murdering me!" to no one in particular, although maybe hoping God or a talent scout would hear the terror in her voice. Then my father would place one hand over her mouth and drag her back inside. An hour later, she'd be on the couch sipping creme de menthe staring dreamily into his eyes.
* * *
When my father saw Ben and me pushing wheelbarrows and shoveling manure, he was convinced our trips to Moloka'i were transforming us from boys into little men. He was pleased Gramma had devised a regimen of chores for us. He didn't want sissies for sons. The more we bent our backs, the more he thought we'd be successful later in life.
"Can't you get the ranchhand to do that, Norm?" my mother asked.
"You spoil 'em all year in Honolulu, Mary," my father replied. "They need to toughen up."
My parents left Moloka'i before they lost their status as guests, before we got distracted from the valuable lessons Gramma was teaching. Back home in Honolulu, my father had his own lessons to teach. He did not believe in sparing the rod or, in his case, his black leather belt. At a moment's notice he'd strip if off and double it up. "This'll hurt me more than you," he'd say as he patted the leather against the palm of his hand. It was hard for me to understand that since I'd be doing all the crying. If I was in trouble that usually meant Ben was in trouble too. I'd beg my father to let me go first because I couldn't stand hearing Ben scream in the next room knowing I was next. "Oldest first," my father answered. I'd fall to my knees and beg again but that never helped. "Your turn will come," he promised. I always figured I got the worst of it because Ben served as his warm-up. Waiting for my turn was worse than the beating itself. I could hear, "I'm sorry, Daddy, I'm sorry!" through the redwood wall we shared. By the time my father entered my room, he'd worked up a healthy sweat. He was like a boxer ready to get in some serious training. "Assume the position," he'd say and I sprawled naked across the mattress, okole facing up. The belt sounded like a whip as it sailed through the air, again and again.
To some extent, Gramma's lessons were directed at my mother. She had tested Gramma's tolerance by sending us over one Easter vacation because her blood pressure was soaring. Ben and I arrived at Moloka'i Airport wearing pink suits and carrying Easter baskets.
Ben raced me across the tarmac. "Gramma, Gramma," he said. "Look what the Easter Bunny brought me!"
Gramma dropped her cigarette and crushed it under her cowboy boot. "No such thing as the damn Eastah Bunny," she said.
"Yes, there is," Ben replied.
"Who in hell dressed yah?"
"Mummy," we answered.
"Bunchah damn sissies."
Ben swung his basket defiantly. "I'm gonna tell, I'm gonna tell."
"Tell nothin'," Gramma said, "yoah damn Mummy's not up heah tah protect yah."
Gramma was so upset by our outfits that she stopped her Jeep on the side of the road and made us get out in our pink suits and pick pineapples. While we picked, she flung our Easter baskets out into the opposite field. She made us pick pineapple after pineapple, until our suits were stained with red dirt and our hands cut by the jagged leaves of the plants. When we got back to her ranch, she made us shovel manure and wheelbarrow in those same suits until the seams split. Gramma never washed them. Instead, she packed them in a box with a note. Ben presented my mother with the box upon our return to Honolulu. When she opened it, the smell nearly knocked her over. The note read, "Dear Mary—next time, don't send your sons up in dresses."
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