Rani Patel In Full Effect

by Sonia Patel

  On that day, I was exactly one year and three months shy of eighteen. Adulthood was approaching. But my dad’s attention had slipped away awhile back. And with it so had my sense of wellbeing, my sense of how things were supposed to be. Of who I was. Of my value. I couldn’t figure out how I’d been managing to keep myself together.

  I was thinking about this as I carried the last of the dirty dishes from the dining area to the sinks in the back. Whenever I think about something deeply, my mind just naturally gets a rhyme going.

  My self is sliding away.

  Self-worth, astray.

  Self-confidence, flying like an angry jay.

  Self-esteem, on the way to faraway.

  Self-respect, not sticking around for these rainy days.

  Two hours before Kanemitsu’s, I still had a full head of hair.

  And all the customers had gone home.

  I’d let my hair out of the bun that had been sitting on top of my head, so tight it felt like I’d been balancing a donut up there. I tilted my head back and shook out my thick black locks.

  Aah.

  My waist-length Indian hair flowed down my back like the river Styx. Some of my Gujju aunties on the mainland called it sahrus var—good hair. My mom called it vagrun var—wild woman hair. I didn’t call it anything. Mostly I tried to tame it by making it into a bun or a French braid or a ponytail.

  Except when I was alone. Then I let my hair down. Loose and free.

  I was thinking about where to start cleaning first—the floors, the table tops, the bar counter—when I heard a garbled male voice.

  “Hey there little lady pretty Hawaiian.”

  My mom was supposed to be the only other person in the restaurant. And she was in the back. Startled, I whipped around to see who it was, grabbing my hair to push it back up.

  “No, leave it down. It’s gorgeous,” mumbled a balding, forty-something-year-old pasty white man. He looked like a happy clown with his sunburned nose and big smile.

  Probably a tourist. He must be drunk, ignorant, or both. I bet both. Because first of all, everyone on Moloka’i knows I’m not Hawaiian. I’m the only Gujarati girl on the island. Second, guys never notice me. Pretty lady? Gorgeous hair? What was he talking about? Moloka’i boys won’t even look at me. To the fine local studs my age, I’m a sixteen-year-old dorky four-eyed flat-chested curry-eating non-Hawaiian nobody.

  “Let’s you and me take a drive,” he suggested, winking. He propped his elbows on the bar. He tracked me with his beady eyes.

  That’ll take chloroform.

  “Tempting,” I said, pulling up my glasses by the hinges. Then I crossed my arms and shifted my eyes and chin slightly up and to the right. As if I was actually contemplating his offer.

  Not.

  I looked back at him. With a bogus pout I said, “Sadly I have to stay and clean up.” And with that, I continued the closing process, ignoring him and his stalker eyes. I shut off the stereo. Silence replaced Leahi’s Island Girls. I switched off half the lights—a nice contrast to the bright, loud, busy evening I’d spent waitressing. Fortunately, the rowdy mainland visitors were gone. Unfortunately, they left behind their boozed-up compatriot.

  I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. He hadn’t moved from his spot at the bar. I grabbed the broom from the tiny closet in the hallway and started sweeping vigorously, hoping he’d get the hint and leave.

  In case you haven’t noticed, Mr. Drunk-Ass-Creep, West End Cafe is closed now.

  He hadn’t noticed.

  He pushed himself off the bar and stood up. For a couple of seconds he swayed like a coconut tree in the trades. Must’ve been all those Primos he ordered. He recovered his balance, then staggered towards me. His red golf shirt with Kaluakoi Resort, Moloka’i embroidered on the left chest was untucked and lifted up on one side. Ugh, I could see his hairy beer belly. Smirking, he slurred, “At least gimme one hug. C’mon, make this old man happy.”

  I didn’t expect that he’d have the chutzpah to actually do it.

  But as soon as he was close enough, he threw his arms around me. Locked in. And squeezed. One of his thick, calloused hands tumbled down my back and crash landed on my okole. Luckily I was still holding the broom, which I used to shove him away. He stumbled back and wobbled, like he was balancing on a tightrope.

  Please don’t fall. I don’t want to deal with this. Get out!

  He found his footing, gave me major stink eye and yelled, “What the hell! You’re too skinny anyway, you crazy bitch.”

  He lurched out, slamming the screen doors behind him.

  Drive safe, s’kebei.

  Thank God. I shut and locked the front entrance, turned around and leaned my back against the door. The humidity hit me like a ton of bricks. My uniform—a black t-shirt with the restaurant’s name printed in large white cursive letters on the front—clung to my skin. Not fast enough, I hoisted it up and off. I chucked it onto the bar and pulled up my hot pink tube top. AA cups require frequent tube top manipulation to prevent slippage. But I refuse to be denied the right to rock my style. And, just because I’m flat as an anthurium, why shouldn’t I enjoy the natural ventilation a tube top offers? Luckily my baggy jeans were already cool—as in temperature and excellence—by virtue of their billowing roominess and the strategically located holes.

  The chill out moment ended all too soon. Mom called from the kitchen, “Rani, do the pouthu, I’ll do the vasun.”

  “Ok,” I called back. I took out the mop and bucket.

  She had no idea what had just happened on the other side of the saloon doors. But that was nothing new. She’s always been oblivious to most things that involve me. Except the piano. That’s the only thing she’s ever really talked to me about—besides what I have to do at the store and restaurant. It’s always been one of two short edicts:

  Practice piano.

  Play piano.

  Anyway, I think she’s been out to lunch with regards to me because she’s been living in Naraka ever since her arranged marriage to my dad seventeen years ago. Living in hell is probably the opposite of the blissful adult life she imagined as a girl growing up in Kenya and Gujarat. Her chance at a happy life was ripped away by my dad and the vaitru he demanded. And here she is still doing his work today.

  Though she’s been blind to things happening in my life, I’ve been a gecko clinging to the wall of her life, listening and watching. Arguments with Dad. Phone calls to relatives. Interactions with customers. And without ever having any heart-to-hearts, I’ve picked up many tidbits about her life. I know she wanted to be a doctor. I know about a handsome man she met at her Gujarat college who wanted to marry her. And she him. I know she never wanted to marry my dad. But as this observant gecko has gleaned, her desires didn’t matter. She had to conform to the expectations set forth by her parents and backed by an entire Gujarati culture. They controlled her life. She submitted. It was all chalked up to naseeb. And boy oh boy, was fate cruel to her. Sometimes I wonder if she thinks it’s a fate worse than death.

  I rolled the bucket to the back room to fill it up. Mom was immersed in washing a mountainous stack of dishes in two of the gigantic industrial-sized sinks. I added a couple of capfuls of mopping solution to the bucket and tugged at the pull-down faucet. Water gushed out and the sudsy mixture rose.

  I gripped the mop handle. I hated to clean. I shoved the bucket like it was a gigantic boulder and I was Sisyphus. When I got to the dining area I surveyed the mess. I blew the loose strands of hair from my face. Napkins, beer bottles, remnants of rice, hamburger steak, and Portuguese bean soup were scattered across the tables and hardwood floor. The soles of my precious hot pink, baby blue, and creamy white Adidas high tops clung to the boards. A strange groan and shudder emanated from my body. It was so bizarre that I decided it should have its own word. A grudder. Or a shroan.

  I hate my life.

  I freakin’ hate my life.

  Then I felt guilty for hating my life because I realized it would never
be as bad as my mom’s. Still, I was resentful. I mopped away the tourists’ dinner evidence and their sticky dregs. The monotony of mopping allowed my thoughts to wander. But like always, they returned to my dad. Things had been out of whack. Worse since the roses.

  In early August, Pono Kamakou and I, both reps for our senior class of 1992, were at Moana’s Florist. Now I’m definitely not one to front like I know much about Hawaiian culture because I most certainly don’t. But I know that it’s customary in local culture nowadays to present honored guests with lei. So Pono and I were selecting lei for the University of Hawaii at Manoa college admissions officers flying over for an assembly early the next morning.

  Incidentally, Pono’s got to be the hottest vice president on the face of the earth. Since I’m president I get to hang with my towering, hunky VP outside of school for official class business like this. In my humble opinion, it’s the biggest perk of being president—a position I was elected to only because no one else ran for it. I’ve been crushing on him since the beginning of junior year. Too bad he’s had a girlfriend pretty much since then. The perfect Emily Angara. Not that it would matter even if he was single because like all Moloka’i boys, he wouldn’t be interested in me even if I was the only girl in school.

  Pretending like I was carefully inspecting ti leaf and pikake lei, I was secretly ogling Pono’s amazing brown eyes, silky black hair, and dark, smooth skin. He’s three-quarter Hawaiian, one-eighth Filipino, one-sixteenth Spanish, and one-sixteenth Chinese with the lean, muscular body of a die-hard surfer. Which he is.

  The front door creaked open. That’s when I spotted the back of my dad’s head. I knew it was him. He’s the only man on Moloka’i with that jet black coarse wavy Indian hair. Pared down like a round, sculpted Chia Pet. I call it his Indro. He didn’t see me.

  Pono dropped the maile lei he’d been looking at and touched my shoulder. He inched closer so that he was standing directly behind me. Then leaning down, his breath warm and sweet, he whispered into my ear, “Isn’t that your dad, Rani?”

  Pono’s hands are on my body!

  My euphoria burst out like when you drop Mentos into a two-liter bottle of Diet Coke. I took a deep breath and nodded. I whispered back, “Wonder why’s he in this place.”

  Dad picked out a bouquet of a dozen red roses. My heart began beating like war drums and my thoughts raced like the dude Pheidippides from that Robert Blacking poem.

  I knew.

  He never bought flowers for my mom. Ever. Plus they’d been fighting more than usual.

  Dad sashayed over to the line at the cash register. He looked as happy as that day last April, the first time he came home at 4 a.m. The night before he told me he’d be out late at a water activist meeting. I saw him creep back into the house early in the morning. He was like a teenager trying to sneak in without waking his parents. Not that I’d ever done that because the only reason I’d be up at that hour is for homework. Which I happened to be doing since 3 a.m. that morning. As he tiptoed past my room, I saw the spark in his eye. That spark was the first time I noticed something had changed. I knew fighting to preserve Moloka’i’s water from the careless clutches of the Ranch and Kaluakoi Resort made him feel like he had a purpose. But elated? That seemed sketchy. He was like a different person. Not the stoic Gujarati man I knew.

  And Dad’s been pretty much MIA since then. At home less and less. Working less and less, and recently not at all. All the while, Mom’s continued to work at the store and restaurant twelve to eighteen hours a day, seven days a week. I’ve maintained my after school and weekends work hours.

  Last year he’d gotten into water activism as a way to “stick it to the Man.” That’s how he described it to me. “The Man” was the Moloka’i Ranch. The Ranch owns about one-third of the island and most of the west end, including the land, houses, and business buildings in the tiny town of Maunaloa. Back in the day, when the Ranch leased a large portion of their land to Libby McNeill & Libby and Del Monte, Maunaloa mainly housed pineapple workers. Today the Ranch rents the houses to their own employees, Kaluakoi employees, and former pineapple workers or their families. And they rent the store and restaurant buildings to my parents.

  Dad’s pissed because the Ranch didn’t renew our lease on the store or restaurant, leaving us only two more years to run the businesses. Well, only one more year now. Dad’s been fixated on revenge ever since. He knew that the Ranch and Kaluakoi had been wanting full access to Moloka’i’s only source of fresh water to irrigate and expand the tourist potential of the dry west end. He also knew that many people on Moloka’i didn’t want the island’s limited water supply to be wasted on tourist development projects. Especially when many Hawaiian homesteaders didn’t yet have access to the water for their agriculture. I’m no local but I’ve always agreed that the water should be for the Native Hawaiians first and foremost. You don’t have to be Einstein to see the logic in that. Dad eagerly jumped on the “no way in hell is the Moloka’i Ranch or Kaluakoi getting our fresh water” activist train. He even became one of the conductors. For him, it’s been the perfect “fuck you” to the Ranch for “fucking with him.”

  Anyway, Dad’s in line at Moana’s. He turned his head and dug around in his front left pocket for his wallet before realizing it was in his back pocket all along. That’s when I spotted his new beard. So George Michael. Short boxed, closely trimmed. I inhaled sharply. In the two weeks that I hadn’t seen him, he let his five o’clock shadow grow. He never allowed himself to keep any kind of facial hair before. Come on now, the guy used to ridicule guys with hair.

  Rani, what do you call a man with a beard?

  I don’t know, Dad. What?

  Unemployed.

  Oh the irony.

  I snuck up behind him and tapped him lightly on his shoulder. “Hey, Dad!”

  He spun around. The gigantic bouquet brushed my face. “Oh, hi Rani. What’re you doing here?” he asked, pretending to be unphased.

  “Pono and I are ordering some lei for school. Who are the roses for?” I asked, my fingertips touching the red velvet band that held the stems together. I tried to sound calm though my heart was pounding.

  Dad didn’t skip a beat. “Your mom, of course,” he said, then gave me a self-righteous smile.

  Yeah right.

  How could he straight up lie to me—with absolutely no hesitation? After he left, I paraded back and forth in front of Moana’s, debating. I decided a call to Mom was in order. I rushed to a nearby pay phone and dialed. Like a sportscaster, I laid out a play-by-play and wrapped it up with my hunch about Dad’s two-timing.

  Mom refused to believe my girl’s intuition.

  The roses were on the kitchen counter when we got home from work later that evening. Duh. Obviously he had to drop them off. He’d even scribbled a fake ass card.

  To: Meera. From: Pradip.

  Pathetic. No “Love, Pradip,” of course. Mom didn’t say a word. Her face remained impassive as she filled a tall, crystal vase with water and added an aspirin.

  I pushed the mop faster. The scowl on my face grew as I thought about the smug look on Dad’s face as he held the bouquet that day. For me the roses were the penultimate piece of the puzzle. B.R. (Before Roses), I was skeptical. Seriously, since when do activist meetings run all night? A.R. (After Roses), I was completely done falling for it. But I had no clue that the final piece of the puzzle would be revealed in less than two hours.

  Mopping done. Moping, not so much. I rinsed out the mop and bucket and propped them against each other on the floor to air dry. Mom was wiping down the sinks. She wrung out the towel and hung it, then sat on the rusty metal chair in the corner.

  “I’m starving, Mom. Time for Kanemitsu’s. You want anything?” I asked, smiling, trying to be cheerful.

  “No, I’m tired.” Her face was sour like amchoor. I watched her massage her swollen left ankle.

  She had twisted her ankle here three weeks ago running around as both cook and waitress. Time to rest an
d heal her ankle? Ha! That’s a luxury Mom hasn’t had since we moved to Moloka’i five years ago.

  Mom yawned. “I’m going home. I’ll eat the leftover shaak and bhatt.” Her eyes were vacant, as if she were peering through the paneled wall.

  By then it was 10:30 p.m. It was the earliest we’d ever been pau on a Saturday. We locked the back door and headed down the ramshackle stairs to the unpaved parking lot shared with the Big Wind Kite Factory and the Maunaloa Post Office. Besides those two businesses, a gas station down the road, a Moloka’i Ranch office, and our store and restaurant, there aren’t any other shops or offices in Maunaloa. My eyes adjusted to the night. I saw a thick, eight-inch centipede zip past my mom’s feet and make its way under the raised restaurant building.

  She didn’t notice. I walked more cautiously, deliberately lifting my kicks a few inches higher than normal. Didn’t want any centipede guts on my Adidas beauties. I climbed into our green 4runner. My waterworks started when I saw Mom lift her ankle into our dusty Cressida so carefully. I cried in the darkness. My mind went straight to that summer day in ‘87 when we still lived in Connecticut, the day Dad came home from work and dropped a bomb.

  “I’m moving to Moloka’i. Come if you want.”

  He left the next day. That’s exactly how it happened. Without telling Mom or 12-year-old me, Dad had purchased Maunaloa General Store and West End Café, leasing the buildings they were in from the Ranch. And, despite every fiber of her being rejecting the idea of leaving the East Coast and her Gujju social network, the strong Indian subservience flowing through my mom’s veins took over. On her own, she packed everything, sold the house, and said her tearful goodbyes. Dutifully she and I boarded one of the first of several planes, setting out on our journey to the remote Hawaiian island we still couldn’t properly pronounce.

  Ever since then, the three of us have been living in cultural isolation on Moloka’i. No other Indians here, let alone Gujaratis. I’ve had five years to stew about all this. It’s clear to me that the wheels of our severe family dysfunction had already been in motion on the East Coast, but they went into cruise control on our time capsule-island-of-turmoil—Dad’s ego stroked and inflated by his increased ability to do whatever he wanted without the meddling and gossip of our Gujju friends and relatives, Mom cut off from her protective Gujju connections. And me, fully dependent on Dad’s attention for any semblance of worthiness. A self-sustaining state of disarray. Our family roles became carved in volcanic stone. Dad—raja, the king. Mom—kam vaari, his servant. Me—rani, his queen.