“Okay,” I say to Dean and your father. “It’s time.”
There’s a pause in all our breaths. Then one inhale together, a breath we lock up as long as we can. It escapes us. Then we step away, to where the lava breaks to soft soil. And there we scrape until the earth gives enough space to let the lei rest. It’s warm, it’s dark. It will keep you.
Do you remember the tiny curl of your fingers, the dimples on the backs of your hands in that first year of your life? The complete contemplation in those fingers as they wrapped around mine. Hours of your frogged arms and legs against my chest, both of us deep in sleep. Your downy cheek against mine.
Now we are on our knees, your father and brother and me, and we place the lei in the pit and the soil slides back over it like an eyelid closing that will never open again.
* * *
FOR A FEW DAYS none of us want to do anything. Quiet blankets the house in Kalihi. We come, we go. Work and home. Cheap cereal. Saimin and fried eggs. Microwave pizza. Fast showers and stacks of bills past due.
Khadeja has been calling our house, the same as she has since you went missing. I don’t know how long the two of you were together, but there’s something fierce there. It’s good, knowing that you bridged that gap with someone, before you left. It’s difficult telling her. But, much like me, I get the sense she already knew the answer before she asked the question.
“Is there anything I can do?” she asks.
“Nothing,” I say. “We put a lei in the earth for him. I’m sorry you weren’t here.”
“I’m sorry, too,” she says. “It’s just with Rika, my job … it’s not easy to move around, like it was before.”
“I know,” I say. “But we’ll always be here, if you ever want to come.”
“I understand.”
She’ll call again, or I’ll call her. We can keep this connection, let it be something.
* * *
DEAN EXTENDS HIS plane ticket back to Spokane as far as he can, playing with the dates to minimize the fees, most of which we get waived for bereavement, until finally the date comes.
“I’m useless here,” Dean says. “Better I go back Spokane.”
“And what, toss more boxes?” I say.
He flinches. I already want to take it back.
“Won’t be that way forever,” he says.
“You can do at least as good here.”
“I cannot. You know how it is. Up there get plenty different ways for make money. Not like here.”
“This is your home,” I say. “Is money all that matters?”
“I can’t do nothing about how it is,” he says.
“This is your home,” I repeat.
He keeps his eyes so they don’t find mine. Out the window, at the floor, anywhere but where I can see him.
“I gotta go,” he says. There’s not much for him to carry in his bag, but he takes what he has. We drive to the airport.
* * *
MORE DAYS GO, BLUE and stiff and long. But there’s a morning I wake, Aloha Friday, after trade winds have blown apart the night’s storm. The leaves are wet and fresh and there’s a clean salt in the air, as it would be just after a wave breaking.
We don’t have to stay this way.
Your father and I coordinate our work schedules and get a Saturday off together. Then we call Crisha and Nahea, Keahi and Mike-guys, friends we don’t see as much as we should, call them down to Ala Moana, us with our hibachi, and we potluck with mac salad, fried rice, and Crisha gets us steak that we ginger right on the hibachi, Keahi brings two long blue cooler trunks of Kona and Maui Brewing like he’s royalty. In front of us, past the edge of the trees and down on the sand, small waves crumble and hiss in sandy blue. People play catch with their dogs, sleep on towels. Behind us there’s the peak of downtown buildings, glimmering office glass and clean white concrete we’ve never been inside and speculate about while we grill and get unsteadily mellow off the beers.
How many stories do we tell? How long are we laughing when Keahi can’t find an unlocked bathroom and is running up and down the frontage sidewalk with his hand clamped on his crotch? We nod our heads and wonder who that is on the radio, turn it up. We let the sun rain down on our brown bodies, get sea-washed salt in our hair and eyes, jump off the rocks into the torch-blue ocean like we’re young and tight-bodied.
There’s aloha yet, to keep the rest of us alive.
24
MALIA, 2009
Kalihi
Garkins Properties LTD
5142 Hinkleston Place
Portland, OR 97290
February 10, 2009
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Flores:
This letter is to inform you that one of our property tenants, Nainoa Flores, has an overdue balance of rent; as the cosigner for the tenant, you are now responsible for the amount owed.
The tenant is currently in breach of tenancy due to the accumulating size of the past due balance. This is the third such notice our offices have sent you. Unless full payment is received promptly, the tenant will be required to quit, vacate, and deliver possession of said property on or before the end of the month, February 28, 2009. Should the tenant fail to do so, we will take such legal action as the law requires to evict the tenant from the premises.
You are to further understand that we shall in all instances hold both the tenant and you, as a cosigner, responsible for all present and future rents due under your tenancy agreement.
Thank you for your cooperation.
25
KAUI, 2009
San Diego
Morning like an ice pick to the frost of my brain, I wake as always after a few hours knowing I need to keep moving. The couch I’m sleeping on is Saad’s, a guy I knew from the climbing gym, who I helped out with homework back in the day. I’ve been creeping in through the front door after dark with the borrowed key. Then morning, my alarm before he and his roommate are up so I can leave without seeing anyone.
Sometimes I take the floor instead of the couch. If I want something hard. Sometimes that’s what I deserve or what I want to make myself feel, my bones and something hard. It makes me feel like I’m camping, like I’m back in Indian Creek. Fingernails jammed to the quick with chalk and the grime of splitter cracks. Me and Van under nylon tent ceilings, right, huddled up against each other while the bears outside snuffle around our tents.
I’d dumpster-dove by the dorms and fished out a half-done bottle of Vicodin. I couldn’t believe the luck and I put as many in me as the Internet recommended. Took a ride on a warm syrup version of myself for hours, right?
Now. Up from the couch. Saad’s family is a million years ahead of mine. The place stinks of their wealth. The furniture shines like it’s been buttered. The drawer handles all thin and chrome. The doors are heavy and sit at whatever angle you leave them, glide open and closed the way I imagine the gates of a castle would. If someone were to ask me what money means this would be what I would say: The world feels like it will stay under you no matter what you do.
I check the fridge. Like something might have appeared overnight. Right. It holds a plastic-smelling pitcher of filtered water, a six-pack of Pepsi and nine beers, margarine and sriracha, a fogged jar of pickles, and polished, empty crispers. A box of baking soda gashed open in the corner. In the cupboards the same crackling bags of natural cheese curls and graham crackers, chocolate frosting and vegetable chips. These guys are barely better off than me.