The Color of Air

by Gail Tsukiyama

  In her grief and shame, his mother hid his father’s suicide, and told everyone at Kazoku Village that he had died of a heart attack in his sleep. Koji knew his father’s death had been fueled by his own demons, along with a fistful of sleeping pills he’d gathered over the year, but he told no one, not even Razor. Afterward, his mother never honored his father’s memory at the temple, and never forgave him for leaving her alone among the endless fields of sugarcane, so far from Japan and her ancestors.

  * * *

  The spirits of his parents never visited him, unlike Mariko and others, whom Koji hoped were his aumakua, spirit guardians, who came to him in times of need. He was reminded of his own weaknesses and past actions every time the spirits were with him, and though he knew it was important to move forward, the notion paralyzed him. Koji shook the thought away, struck a match, and reached up to light the thin stick of incense. He’d never been religious but found himself lighting a stick each evening since Mariko’s death. At first it was to honor her, but as time went by, Koji realized it was for his own selfish reasons.

  He stepped back and watched as the dark smoke spiraled up, then closed his eyes and breathed in the sweet fragrance that filled the small house, letting the scent surround him. And for a short time, he felt Mariko there in the room with him, a warm reminder that he wasn’t alone.

  Island Voices

  RAZOR, 1901

  My real name is Yoshio, which means righteousness, but I’ve been called Razor for as long as I can remember. I’ve always been fascinated by my father’s straight-edge razor scraping his cheek every morning, so they gave me the nickname. My father gave me that razor when I was thirteen and I carry it with me always. Three years have passed and I’m still working as a hoe hana, but what I want more than anything, yeah, is to be cutting cane like Koji. I can already feel the weight of the cane knife in my hand as I swing it against the tall stalks with a hard, solid thwack of the blade, watching them fall over like toy soldiers. Now that this year’s harvest is over, I hope to be finally cutting cane next season. I can feel it.

  Meanwhile, for a few sweet weeks in December, hoes and knives are forgotten and we sneak down to Hilo whenever we can to meet Franklin. Franklin Abe is a friend of my cousin who’s a year older and lives down in Hilo. The three of us have become fast friends and Koji and I can’t get down to town fast enough, yeah. We help Salvador, the engineer of the sugar train, and the workers load the burlap bags of sugar onto the train, so we can hitch a ride from the mill down to Hilo wharf. We also pay Salvador with loose cigarettes pinched from other workers or a bottle of soda pop or coconuts Franklin has climbed the trees to cut down. We take turns shoveling coal into the furnace and hang out of the open windows, wind whipping our faces. Below, the big ocean spreads out gray and choppy as the sky clouds over and a warm rain soothes our hot skin. Moments later the sun pushes through the dark clouds again, forming a sun shower, leaving us sticky with sweat and laughter.

  “Stay out of trouble,” Salvador tells us once we jump off at the Hilo train station. We’re already halfway down the platform when he yells, “And get back here on time, or you’ll be walking back up the mountain. You hear?!”

  Outside the station, we meet Franklin and walk to Hilo bay or a beach close by. Koji and I act like we do this every day, like we’re town boys, not cane boys. Along the way, Franklin pulls out the slingshot he made from a branch of red manzanita. He’s a natural with it, yeah, shattering bottles and clipping mangoes, and even hitting lychees off of trees from twenty feet away. There’s not much Frank can’t do, and the girls like that, his tall, skinny body, his cocky grin, his pretty-boy good looks so different from us. Koji’s strong and quiet. Me, I’m short and persistent. What I don’t have in height, I have in stubbornness. Like a dog clutching a bone, Koji teases, never going to give it up. But we can’t hide the dirt under our nails, while Franklin has an excitement that draws attention to him.

  It’s no different today when we meet the three girls down at Onekahakaha Beach for the first time. It’s a windy day, the palms swaying, whitecaps on the ocean looking like a thousand white birds on the surface of the water. Koji and I watch the girls walk across the beach toward town, laughing and talking, fishing poles and buckets in hand. Other than Koji’s sister, we don’t know many girls.

  “Three for three,” Franklin says, as he tucks his slingshot into his back pocket. “I’ll be right back.”

  We have no idea what he means and just stand there as if we’ve suddenly lost our tongues. We shyly watch Franklin walk over to the girls, full of bravado and confidence as he talks and laughs with them. Frank can talk himself into, or out of, anything, something Koji and I can’t help but admire.

  When we return to the plantation later that afternoon, Koji can’t stop talking about each of the girls—Nori, the protective one; Leia, the tall, quiet one; and Mariko, the one with the beautiful smile and a small dark mole near her left jawline. It’s like a period at the end of a sentence, Koji says. He has stopped right there. My best friend is already so mesmerized he can’t see straight, yeah, and I don’t have the heart to tell him that while he was standing there watching Mariko’s every move, her gaze never left Franklin.

  The Past, the Present

  November 25–26, 1935

  15

  Island Boys

  The little girl lay on the hospital bed and opened her eyes, staring at Daniel accusingly. She never said a word as her body began to shake in violent spasms. He tried to get the attention of the other doctors in the room, but they continued to ignore him, even when he began screaming that the girl had gone into cardiac arrest, only to realize that it was his heart pounding erratically followed by a painful explosion in his chest.

  Daniel sat up from bed, sweating, clutching his chest. Switching on the light, he glanced at the clock to see that he was late. He’d fallen back to sleep and into the unsettling dream. He pushed aside his sheet and scrambled out of bed. Wilson and Mano were waiting for him at the wharf. If he hurried, he could still make it down to the dock before the Okawa & Sons fishing boat left its berth at 3:00 a.m.

  Daniel was winded by the time he arrived at the dock, the troubling dream far away, just as Wilson started the boat’s engine and it roared to life. The stink of gasoline along with the briny ocean brought back his last trip out on the Okawa fishing boat with Wilson and Mano more than fifteen years earlier. That morning, however, they had endured rough waters for just over half an hour when Daniel began to feel seasick, his stomach roiling and his breakfast rising as he rushed to vomit over the side of the boat and into the choppy sea.

  “Best kind of fish bait, braddah,” Wilson had said, slipping into pidgin, and laughed, almost choking on the sandwich he was eating.

  Little bothered good-natured Wilson. He could eat anytime, anywhere, and was at his best on the boat bringing in the fish. Growing up, Daniel watched Wilson and Mano’s relationship alternate between adoration and animosity. Wilson, two years older, was big and strong and boisterous, whereas Mano was more introspective and easily irritated by his brother’s antics, while thankfully, Daniel created balance by being the one they both listened to.

  They were all too different for comparison.

  * * *

  “Look who got out of bed!” Wilson said, waving Daniel to come aboard in the dimness of the early morning.

  Once on board, he steadied himself against the boat’s rocking motion as Mano threw him the rope tethering the boat to the dock and jumped down after him.

  “Let’s go, yeah!” Mano yelled.

  Moments later they pulled away from the dock, leaving Hilo behind. A cool wind blew. Daniel breathed in and out and watched the dark outlines of a sleeping Hilo town grow farther away. Hovering over the island, Mauna Loa’s massive shadow rose toward the moonlight, still smoking, a billowing cloud of steam and gas reaching upward in its dark and dangerous beauty. In the growing distance, Daniel understood what lured the brothers out to sea every morning. He fe
lt completely liberated sailing out into the vast and unpredictable ocean, leaving the rest of the world behind. And for the moment all his anxieties, his mistake and guilt concerning the little girl, the questions of his father’s return, even the eruption felt insignificant in comparison.

  Daniel was half listening to Mano talking when he caught her name and quickly turned around.

  “I said Maile’s back from Honolulu,” Mano repeated.

  Just hearing her name made the past rise with the boat on a sudden wave. He planted his feet to keep his balance. Maile rang through his mind, only to still on his tongue.

  “She’s back in Hilo?” Daniel asked.

  “Just the other night,” he answered. “Kailani said she came by the house yesterday afternoon.”

  “You didn’t see her?”

  Mano shook his head.

  Mano’s wife, Kailani, and Maile had been best friends through high school. He and Maile had gone steady through their junior and senior years, and everyone assumed they would marry right after graduating, as so many other local kids did. Instead, Daniel left for school in Chicago. They tried to stay together through his first year away, but when Daniel returned the following summer it became awkward between them. He was enamored of his new life in a big city and they no longer seemed to fit. Before he returned to Chicago, they had agreed to take a break. At the time his sadness was quieted by his ambition. “You have to choose what you keep and what you let go of in life,” his mother said, remaining neutral, though he knew she already thought of Maile as a daughter. “Just be certain, yeah, I don’t want you to regret it later on.”

  Part of him always had.

  “Did Kailani say how she’s doing?” Daniel asked. He saw her again, thin and dark-eyed, with the prettiest smile he’d ever seen.

  Wilson had cut the engine, and the sudden quiet was soothing. The boat swayed from side to side as Mano gathered the nets on deck.

  “Maile’s good,” he said. “She came back with a teaching certificate. Always smart, yeah. She’s staying with her cousin for now.”

  Daniel hesitated. “Didn’t she get married?”

  Over the years, Daniel just wanted the best for Maile. He’d made his choice, as his mother said. Still, it bothered him to know that she’d married someone else. He was always busy in Chicago and had a few convenient relationships, but none that came close to serious. Now the thought of seeing Maile again brought a warm flush of happiness.

  Mano shrugged. “Last I heard, she broke it off,” he said. “You’ll have to ask Kailani for the details. She’s been asking why you haven’t come by yet.”

  “Tell her I’ll be over soon,” he said, and smiled.

  Daniel helped Mano hook the nets up to the wench and power block before they waved for Wilson to lower them into the water. All the while he tried to remain steady at the news.

  Maile wasn’t married.

  * * *

  By the time the sun rose, Daniel helped the brothers pull in the nets, heavy with a load of flailing tuna, the rough rope burning against his palms. It felt good exerting a different set of muscles after so many years away. Daniel needed this. Everything seemed alive with movement, the deck bobbing from side to side, the rise and the fall, the creaks and groans of the boat. They stood watching the fish thrash around down in the hold, gasping for water, the silvery glint of skin and scales reflecting off the sunlight before Wilson threw another bucket of salt water over them and closed the hatch.

  “Good catch, braddahs,” he said, grinning at them.

  “You’re buying breakfast,” Mano quipped.

  They headed back, and as Hilo appeared in the hazy morning light, the rising smoke from Mauna Loa was now in full view.

  “Think it’s ever going to stop?” Mano asked.

  “Pele can’t stay mad forever,” Wilson said.

  “Yeah, she can,” Mano said. “Pele’s not like one of your girlfriends you can sweet-talk out of being mad at you.”

  Daniel smiled, watching the two brothers banter back and forth when he heard a surge of water followed by a sudden violent blow to the port side of the boat that pitched him and Mano across the deck. They both slid and hit hard against the starboard side, hanging on as the Okawa & Sons tilted halfway onto its side and a rush of seawater drenched the deck. Wilson clung to the railing on the upended port side, dangling from the rail as Mano grabbed onto a rope and pulled himself up, throwing his weight toward his brother to help right the boat again. Daniel tried in vain to get up, but the slippery, lurching deck kept him holding on tight. He heard Wilson yelling just as the boat righted, slamming back down onto the water and rocking from side to side until it finally settled enough for Daniel to pull himself up.

  “What the hell was that?” Wilson asked as the boat rocked from side to side and he found his footing again. “Look, there!” he then said, pointing toward the water.

  They all hung over the side of the boat to see a kohola, a young humpback whale, swimming away from them. The whale must have lost his way and ventured farther into the bay than usual, clipping the boat as he turned and swam back out to sea.

  Daniel rubbed his shoulder and made sure Wilson and Mano were both all right. They talked happily as they secured the deck. Their bumps and bruises were nothing compared to seeing a kohola up close. Growing up, Uncle Samuel had told them the whales were also known as aumakua, a family guardian of great respect. It was a story they would be telling until they were old men.

  “Wait till we tell Dad,” Mano said.

  “He’s not going to believe the boat was kissed by a kohola, yeah,” Wilson added.

  They were boys again, standing together and laughing with disbelief at the once-in-a-lifetime event. Daniel let out a relieved breath. He could hardly believe he was a world away from Chicago and could leave the anguish behind. He and his brothers had been touched by a humpback whale, and Maile had returned. Daniel looked up. In the distance Pele continued to erupt, watching, reminding him that despite being kissed by a kohola, the fire goddess was still in charge.

  16

  Hide-and-Seek

  Maile had been back in Hilo for two days, awakening each morning to the dry, metallic taste of panic on her tongue. She was safely home, yet couldn’t stop worrying that her ex-fiancé might have followed her back from Honolulu. She sat at the kitchen table in her cousin’s house drinking coffee, a sliver of sunlight sliding through the barely parted curtains and caressing her wrist. She wanted to get up and make herself something to eat, but just the thought seemed to steal away all her energy. There was no way he could know, Maile reasoned. She was being foolish. She hadn’t told anyone she was returning to Hilo.

  Still, she couldn’t shake the fear.

  Maile was ashamed at how naive she’d been. As soon as she received her teaching certificate she was determined to leave Honolulu. Regardless of the eruption and the cancellations of steamers sailing to Hilo, she still found a way home. Her boat had docked on the Kona side. From there, she’d caught a ride to Kohala and boarded a train to Hilo. She arrived back in town at dusk, in the grayish light of despair, when most of the shops were closed and the locals would be at home with their families. She had sneaked back like a thief, trying to reach the safe area without being seen, just like when she played hide-and-seek as a child.

  Maile had dated a few young men in Honolulu, but only one had been serious after Daniel, serious enough to marry. He was a good-looking haole—smart and worldly—having traveled throughout the mainland, he’d told her. He was a businessman, a dealmaker who took her out to expensive restaurants and popular clubs she never dreamed of entering. Until they were engaged, he’d been loving and attentive. Afterward, as the weeks rushed into months, his smile turned into a scowl. When his deals began to fall through, he blamed her. The first time he slapped her, Maile smiled at the stinging surprise of it, telling herself it must have been an accident, he didn’t mean it. Thinking back, she’d heard the same excuses from the lips of several of her hig
h school girlfriends about their boyfriends. He made her quit studying for her teaching certificate, saying he would take care of her, right before he began following her everywhere just to make sure she was going directly to the store, or to church, or to a girlfriend’s house down the block.

  “You better not lie to me,” he warned.

  By the time he’d split her lip with a closed fist and threatened to kill her, Maile knew she had to get away. She waited for her chance and quickly disappeared one morning when he left for a business meeting. She found a job waitressing on the other side of the island, rented the back room in a house owned by a Chinese widow, and vowed to return and finish studying the last five months for her teaching certificate before leaving, hoping upon hope she wasn’t worth looking for.

  On weekends, Maile found the courage to get out and walk a few blocks, always looking out for him, always fearful that he would find her. The big world that she had once dreamed of seeing became smaller and smaller as she took to spending most of her time in Chinatown, hiding in the older areas of Honolulu with small, run-down buildings and family-owned stores that sold shave ice and reminded her of Hilo, places he would never think to step foot in.

  Since her return home, Maile had only visited Kailani. When she heard from her friend that Daniel was also back from Chicago, her heart sped and she felt a dull ache in her stomach as Kailani kept saying, “It’s fate, yeah,” that they’d returned within days of each other. She couldn’t imagine what Daniel would see in her now; he had studied on the mainland and was a doctor, while she’d barely gotten her teaching certificate. Maile watched her friend rattle on happily and couldn’t bring herself to tell Kailani she no longer believed in fate or magic or fairy tales.