How many times I tried for get into Kahena Academy, where Noa and Kaui are now, where they got scholarships for us Native Hawaiians, but you gotta prove you’re worth it with a fully juice test, all haole words and useless math. Like just because you can define “catalyst,” you get in.
We regret to inform you. Our applicant pool is three to one and growing. We encourage you. Try again.
Seventh grade, eighth grade, ninth, me applying and the letters coming, one every year. And then the try for the next year would start: fat flexy prep books and Mom packing me J. Yamamoto Whole Wheat Crackers and I was all, No Ritz? And Mom was all, It’s twice the price and you’re only paying for the commercials, and so J. Yamamoto crackers with old peanut butter and me in the cafeteria as soon as school was out, sweating the prep books until practice. All those mornings on the bus to Lincoln, Jaycee-guys would be talking about Monday Night Football or Temptation Island, and I was all, FOIL method and quadratic equation, and they were all, The hell does that mean, and I was all, I don’t know but I feel like I’m having its baby.
Kaui and Noa got into Kahena their first try.
And Dad every week working luggage at the airport with after-dark overtime. And Mom some mornings and some nights and if she’s lucky both at J. Yamamoto, her going after extra shifts the way a crackhead goes after batu. And at the end of the night them coming home with work still banging around in their bones, might as well they’re saying, Dean, can’t you see what we are? And me wanting to say it don’t matter if I can’t get what they want on some stupid test, guess whose name everyone knows after the arena on Friday night. Guess who can tell you how the girls smell naked at almost every school in our division.
I stayed by the side of the window, near the propane rack. Customers came and went, I could hear my mom and Trish talking with ’um, you could tell when it was a local because there was plenty laughs and names of cousins and grandmas rolling around all relaxed, but when it was haoles usually they were like, Do you know what time the Arizona Memorial opens, or How do I get to Sea Life Park from here. And Mom and Trish answered but you could tell they wanted for be like, Everyone brown is not your tour guide. Mom got hours left of standing, trying for smile, taking people’s cards and giving them all the steaks and swordfish and fancy beer they want.
Listen, all of you, I wanted for say: I’m going to take us all away from this. I’m gonna make it so that can’t no one order us around for anything. And the way is basketball. Noa might be special but he’s not money. I can do it. Here, then college, then pros, and I mean it. I’ll make so much money it’ll be coming out my ōkole. I always felt that and then I was making ’um happen.
* * *
ONLY NOW EVERY basketball game was worse. Another week just the same. When they’re over, when it’s quiet and there’s space in my head, it fills up with that night, how much I wanted for hurt Noa and Mom both, like really wanted to break some part of them, and the way afterward my knuckles felt like beehives, full of all this small pain that’s still stinging me from the inside, trying to get out.
But I had that shoebox and I figured why not? and texted Jaycee I was too sick to practice and instead I caught the bus to Ala Moana Park to hang out past the hibachis. To sell. I was over by the part where you still got some of the old-fish stink of the bathrooms but you couldn’t see it easy from the street, so I figured it was the safest spot. The ocean was all sagging against the rocks, had that grass starting for die in a yellow way. When I first sat there, for a while before buyers started coming, it was even fully peaceful. No basketball no Noa no nothing and I was actually thankful.
But the buyers came. They always find me. At least I still got my flow for that if nothing else.
I sold until I shouldn’t. Until the ocean was ashy from the black clouds mobbing down off the Ko‘olaus and a few raindrops slapped my head. I sold until everything was empty. Then I went home.
When I got to the front door at our house, I heard the popping rips of meat hitting oil in a pan and from the half-burned golden smell of breadcrumbs frying I figured it was Mom making chicken katsu. I was home later than I should’ve been, so I stood at the door trying for think about my story when Mom just opened the door for me.
“I thought that was you,” she said, with her tired smile.
I looked over my shoulder. Not like there’s anyone or anything back there at the end of the cul-de-sac, but it gave me a second to think about what to do.
“Yeah,” I said. “Long practice today.”
“Nainoa told me about the new study group you’re in after school. Must be hard to do that after practice?”
It took me a minute to figure out what Noa did for me and then I nodded and said, “Yeah. But I’m doing okay.”
“Good,” she said.
I took my shoes off, put my ball on the ground. It rolled across the slanted-ass floor, toward the hall to our bedrooms. That bent-ass floor. Our tin roof all shot with rust. Our kitchen counter that’s got all these black and yellow spots from years of smokers and slackers that had the house before us. We were getting ready for eat chicken, from the sale bin I bet at J. Yamamoto, with the sell-by date way past, so that Mom gotta bread the hell outta it for keep the real taste hidden.
“I’m sorry,” I said. Like all of a sudden. Like a guilty kid.
She stopped turning the chicken, looked right at me. “I thought we talked about this,” she said. “It isn’t about just sorry.”
“I can be better,” I said.
“I know,” she said. “So do it.”
“Noa, too, yeah?” I said. “It’s not just me.”
Mom was getting paper towels out to cover a tray for the katsu. “We need you to support your brother right now. Let him worry about his problems.”
It was weird silent after that. I could’ve said, This is bullshit, making me be his helper, but I thought of Mom at J. Yamamoto. Just didn’t seem right to fight anymore. “How was your day?” I asked.
I almost never asked her that, I don’t know why. She realized it, too, because I saw her brighten and fully think. Took a minute before she answered.
“My day,” she finally said, tapping the tongs on the pan. “My day sucked dick.”
“Right, I get you,” I said. “What kind of dick, though? There’s all kinds, you’ve got your long horse dick, your furry goat dick, your hot bull dick …
“But,” I make like I’m thinking, even rub my chin, “that’s really more of a balls thing, with the bull.”
Mom laughed. It was a good one, too, like it just firecrackered out from a place even she didn’t know was there. “God, boys,” she said. “You’re all so sick. I should know better than to even get you started.”
“I’m a perfect gentleman,” I said, “once you get to know me.”
“A perfect gentleman can help set the table, then,” Mom said. She pointed at the silverware drawer.
She asked me to go tell Noa and Kaui that dinner was almost ready, and that I should take my backpack to my room, and then she was back with the plates and the katsu and I did my part before going to our room, me and Noa’s.
He was there, head-down into his ‘uke, but it fell off the minute I came in.