I stop by a mirror. I mean I guess it’s worth looking every once in a while. There I am: natty Hawaiian hair that I start bunning up the minute I see it in the mirror, that nose thick and flat from bridge to tip, the muscles in my arms and legs looking softer. With my arms up I can see my middle and it is not flat. And even in San Diego I’ve lost some of my brown.
But I am here. I guess. Okay.
Everything has been wrong since the house party, Van, where I left her. I always feel tired even when I manage a complete night of sleep, right, and I’m afraid around every enclosed space I’m going to see her, or those boys, or someone else that knows. I have a feeling word has spread everywhere and people are already looking at me different, even people I don’t know.
Most school days I find my way to class without seeing anyone that knows for sure, and it’s easy enough to dodge everyone because I mostly chose morning classes. But some days it doesn’t matter, I still end up seeing Van or Katarina or Hao and have to dodge into the nearest building. I’m like a cockroach, right, scuttling into my dorm room when the lights are off, scuttling away when the morning comes, same for Saad’s place. Then in the back of the class, where I can see everyone in front of me. It’s been this way for maybe three weeks. But here’s the thing: I’m not even sure who knows what, since we were all faded and stoned.
But I know the most important what, I know what I am now. I wanted Van and when I couldn’t have her I left her to the animals, Connor and his friends. Until that moment I was certain I’d been moving forward—past Nainoa, past the ways my mom and dad have failed to understand or even want me, past the islands altogether. Now there is no direction but down.
I change for the first time in days and my shirt has layers of grime, light and salty, laked around the pits. I’ve got my climbing pack stuffed with underwear, tampons, toothpaste, my laptop, a flask spattered with a few last licks of whiskey. No razor or foam, though. At first I was like, I really need to shave all my hairiness. Like I’m some sort of good girl, right?
When I roll the fresh shirt over my head something happens. It’s not me in the mirror and I’m not in the bathroom. I feel myself standing on a grass plateau, all green swells and curling wind and those ancient women of hula. All of us in our pa‘u skirts of bristling kapa. I feel the scratches all along my waist and my body naked otherwise. Lei po‘o poking my forehead. My thick hair is miles long, reaching to my ass. My skin is dusted and salt-crusted and girded with gristly muscle. The ancients, hula: all those years since I’ve felt it this way. We are in the field, me and two lines of women, the pahu drum going like the fist of Pele in an earthquake. We dance and chant. The sky’s an upturned bowl of bright heat, more white than blue.
And then my phone rings and I come back to the Kaui of now. It’s Dean on the line. I mash the buttons to send him to voice mail. When I do I see that he’s called a few times already. But I don’t care. I’m not calling anyone anymore. Not Mom or Dad or Dean or Van or any of them.
Dean calls again, ugh. I can see this won’t stop. I pick up the phone.
“She finally answers,” Dean says.
“She does,” I say.
“Kill you to answer your phone? Could’ve been we were all on fire or something.”
“Are you on fire, currently?” I ask.
“Fucking right I am,” he says.
“Dean.”
“What?”
“I don’t have time for your boners. You would only call this much if you wanted something.”
“Why there’s gotta be something I want?” Dean asks. “Man, you’re just like Mom. Maybe all I want for do is talk.”
“Well, let’s talk, Dean,” I say. “Let’s chat. Let’s fraternize. Let’s holler back.”
He’s quiet a minute. “You drunk or something? And why are you whispering?”
“Stoned, actually,” I say. “And I’m whispering because I broke into someone’s house. Proud of me?”
He laughs. “Goddamn.”
I put the phone on speaker so I can finish fixing my hair, use the scraps of makeup I have to clean up my look at least a little. “So, what, you need something, right?”
“How come you never been calling Mom-guys?” he asks.
I look down at the floor where my shoes are. The puddle of my BO-infested shirt, the orange painkiller bottles peeking from my backpack’s open top. “There’s a lot happening over here.”
“I bet.”
“You have no idea,” I say.
“Yeah, well,” Dean says, “lot happening in Portland, too.”
“Portland?”
Before I can ask more, Dean starts in. He says they’re taking Noa’s stuff. He says Noa’s rent wasn’t paid and the next in line to pay it was Mom and Dad.
“You know what that means,” he says.
“You can’t just empty someone’s house if they don’t pay their rent,” I say. “There have to be court orders and things like that. It’s impossible to evict someone these days.”
“They called Mom.” Dean says it like a shrug.
Due process, I say. Tenant’s rights, I say. Reasonable opportunities to repay back rent, I say.
“Look who’s the house lawyer all of a sudden,” Dean says.
“Law & Order marathons on cable, twenty-four seven,” I say.
“Shut up already,” Dean says. “You gotta stop clowning, this isn’t a joke.”
“Okay okay,” I say. “Calm down. Did you call a lawyer?”
“I don’t got time for fight, Kaui,” Dean says. “I gotta fix this. Mom called me.”
The way he says that last part: Mom called me. As in, Let me handle it, right. As in, I finally get to be the good one. But there’s blame in it, I know. For me going back to school while he stayed and bushwhacked alone in the valley. I take in the room around me: boys’ razors crusted with old bloody foam; last year’s Swimsuit Edition magazine in the reading rack by the toilet, sopping bathmat crumpled in the corner. I see it all laid out before me, okay? This day and the day after. Me couch to couch, away from Van and Katarina and Hao. Living out of my backpack since the start of the semester. Drifting off into some rat’s existence because of what I’ve done, or didn’t do.
“Is Noa’s address the same?” I ask.
“Same as it always been in Portland,” Dean says. “Why?”
I hang up. I jam everything I own that’s on the floor back into my bag and tie my shoes. I leave Saad’s key in the mailbox on my way out.
26
DEAN, 2009
Portland
Used to be noa had this way of making you feel stupid without even telling you what was stupid, like he could just talk about how steel gets made or what the Latin blah blah was for “nerve” and you didn’t even have to say nothing one way or the other, and still you came away feeling like he said you was a dumbass. And all morning I been thinking about what he’d be saying if he was here with me, looking through the windows of his apartment and checking the doors for the fifteenth time and being like, I’m locked out. Didn’t even think about how I’d need keys when I got the call from Mom and came busting down here off hitchhikes and bus rides, figuring, I don’t know, the door was going be wide open or the landlord would be here painting or some shit. Noa woulda had something for say for sure if he was here, but he’s not, and I still feel like a dumbass. I don’t even got another place for stay if I can’t get this door open.