by Lisa Freeman
“Why are they called Z-Boys?” I asked.
Jerry pointed to the shop sign over our heads that read Zephyr and gestured at me like, Duh, you dumb girl. It was humiliating, but I wasn’t going to let him get the better of me. I decided to make what Jean said into a rule:
Once a mistake, twice a fool.
I wished she’d follow her own advice. And I decided that next time I’d ask a better question. I waited outside Zephyr while Jerry went in. When he came back, he was all charged up. “We’ve got to go to POP,” he said.
Pacific Ocean Park, I thought. The Cove? Rox went there once, and she told me it was dangerous and smelled like a dead fish.
This is what I can tell you about POP: it was an abandoned amusement park, Santa Monica’s version of Disneyland, and it had mostly burned down. Jerry lifted a portion of the chicken wire fence that surrounded what was left. Above it was another sign. Unlike the Zephyr one, this sign I had no trouble understanding: No Trespassing. Violators Will Be Prosecuted.
“Let’s go,” Jerry said as he gestured for me to go first. I had never broken the law before, which made me so nervous I tripped on my hair as I crawled through. He followed without concern.
Jerry showed me where the Fun House had been, with its mirrors that made you look fat then thin. The seal tanks were now abandoned pools that stood across from the Whirlwind Dipper. The giant octopus ride was rusted, forever mid-spin. “Hang on,” Jerry said to me as he climbed over a broken fence and vanished behind the tentacle.
I was the only girl standing on the balcony that jutted out above the ocean at the farthest end of the park. Most people never got this close to the railing. Guys below pushed their boards out from under the Pier. Then—talk about suicidal—the tide at this break sucked them right out. They soared through wave after wave, carefully realigning themselves so they didn’t get impaled by the metal pilings. Imagine eight-footers breaking in cornfields of solid steel. That’s what it was like. If I compared this pit to State, my beach was like rainbows and daisies. I wished I had brought some sunscreen. By the time Jerry reappeared, my tan was two shades darker.
On the tiny strip of beach below, I could see him hand some cash to a really fine-looking guy. He called up to me, “I just ordered a totally cherry new board for Hawaii.”
At that moment, I really hated Jerry Richmond again. He was smoking a joint and had some Mar Vista bimbo under his arm. When he came up to get me, I untangled him. After all, I had my orders.
As we slogged through the sand back to State, I punished him by talking about food nonstop. I could tell he had the munchies.
“I like sauces that explode in my mouth. Spicy and salty,” I said.
“Yeah,” Jerry said, his eyes lighting up. “Stuff that goes boom on your tongue and makes all the little taste buds stick up.”
“Flaky and tender chicken.”
“Deep-fried duck,” Jerry added.
“Oh, and winter melon soup,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“All kinds of meats and fish, stuffed into a carved-out winter melon. And grilled peaches and butter corn. Handpicked Maui onions.”
“I hear they have the best Filipino food in Hawaii,” Jerry said.
“That’s perfect for you, since you’re Filipino.”
“Well, half,” he said. In the same breath, he pushed my shoulders down so I sat on the bench and said, “Wait here.” I wondered if he was going to disappear for an hour again, but he headed over to the red-and-yellow-striped shack. When he came back, Jerry handed me a hot dog on a stick that was covered in batter and had mustard dripping down the side. “Don’t call it a corn dog.” He chewed in my ear. “See that guy back there? He’s the owner. He’s really proud of his creation, and he hates it when people say it’s a corn dog.”
I took a giant bite off the top. It was delicious. Better than any plate lunch I’d ever had. Jerry nodded, all happy. “And wait till you taste the lemonade,” he said. “Go get it, huh? One of your friends is making a fresh brew.” He bossed me around like I was his secretary or something. How did Rox stand it? But I went.
At the pickup window, I pointed back at Jerry and asked the Hot Dog on a Stick girl, who looked like a clown, “Do you have his lemonade?” She handed me a pint-sized container. I tried to take it from her, but she didn’t let go. She had kinky hair shoved under her peaked hat. Her name tag read Angela. Her lipstick was too dark, too shiny. It wasn’t until I heard the tiny Nepalese bells on her anklet that I thought, Holy shit. Tinkerbell.
“Does your pal know you snagged her boyfriend?”
It was the bitch who had attacked me and chopped off some of my hair last summer. I called her Tinkerbell, but her real name was Angela Espiñoza. She flipped me off as she dipped a hot dog in batter, turned it, and put it into the deep fryer. Then she slammed her palm down on the pump to a vat of ketchup, splattering red, drippy goop all down my legs. It was skillful, considering that her boss was right behind her.
She bent over the counter and hissed in my face. “Your kind make me sick. You’re just a white girl wannabe. Brown hangs out with brown. White hangs out with white. Get your sorry ass out of Venice.” She pushed the ketchup pump again, coating me with a second layer.
I held my hands together, clasped behind my back, so she couldn’t see I was squeezing them so tight the blood stopped flowing. I knew just how to fix her. “Oh, thank you. I love that you call them corn dogs,” I said loudly, looking at her boss and giving the A-OK sign. “Corn dogs. Great name.” I felt a tinge of satisfaction as I quickly walked away, while her boss scolded her. That would shrink her a size or two.
After I finally got Jerry up and moving, I hosed off in one of the many showers lining the beach. Jerry was too freaked out to even ask what was dripping down my legs, but let me tell you this: he was relieved when I made it disappear.
I was in a hurry to get back to Windyland. I had to make sure my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me. Was she really that foxy? But dumb old Jerry was walking so S-L-O-W. It gave me a chance to look for recruits, and boy did I find a couple winners. Two bookend blonds, sitting back to back.
I was feeling lucky, so I just went right up to them and asked for some matches. I was in the zone. Neither one of them looked at me. Instead, they looked at each other. One cocked her head and asked the other, “What do you think she is? Mexican or black?”
The other girl said, “I can’t tell, really. They all look the same to me.”
“Well, I think she’s a little of both,” the other said with a breathy laugh.
My back straightened and my knees locked tight. It was as if my whole life hung in the balance for a second. How tan I am—or am not—has always been an issue. Now, the question was, what was I going to do about it? Raise my fist over my head like Tommie Smith and John Carlos did at the ’68 Olympics to declare black power? Or protest like the folks at Wounded Knee did earlier this year? The only problem is: I’m not black or Native American. I’m a breezy hapa girl, sparkling in coconut oil. Tans fade, but brown is forever.
You’d think after Mr. McBride and Tinkerbell, I’d have a fast comeback, but I just stared at them, paralyzed and speechless, until Jerry strolled up next to me.
Both girls coyly tilted to either side. One of them lowered her top and squeezed her arms together to puff up her boobs. “Oh, we know you.”
“Hey, hi,” he said, all friendly. “You might not know what she is, but I know what you two are.” Their smiles turned up softly as they waited, anticipating him saying something sweet. But instead Jerry looked at me and asked, “Nani, do you think they’re bitches or—”
Before he could continue, I stopped him. He was acting all sexy and loose. Jerry Richmond to the max. The girls choked back the rest of their rotten words, and we walked away arm in arm.
As we strolled, Jerry called back to them, “Do you know who this is? You two just made the biggest mistake of your lives. And don’t ever come to State. She’ll make you wish
you were never born.” He bit at the air like a mad dog.
While he did that, I tapped a bit of pink gloss in the center of my lips, then pursed them together, puckered up, and blew them a kiss. When we were out of sight, I patted Jerry on the back. “Thank you. Or should I say, mahalo. It’s about time you learned how everybody talks back home.”
I was so disgusted, sweaty, and tired. I tapped him on the arm, hanging my purse over his shoulder and sticking my shorts in his hand. Then I waded into the water for a while to perk myself up.
How humiliating had that been? It was one thing to have to deal with people’s stupid racism on my own, but having it happen in front of Jerry Richmond made it worse. When I finally came out of the water, pushing my hair off my face and twisting it to one side, squeezing it as I looked up, Jerry was standing where Pete and Adam had been. I looked up and down the beach, jerking my head back and forth so quickly I got a kink in my neck. I grimaced, grabbing where it hurt.
“Are you okay?” Jerry asked.
“Where are they?” My hope vanished.
“You didn’t expect them to wait?”
“Yeah, I did,” I told him. I felt shattered. “What time is it, anyway?”
“It’s after six, Nani. You should wear a watch.”
“Never. Watches are for haoles.” I had decided not to use that word anymore, but I was so pissed. I fell into a cavernous space inside myself, where all my regrets waited for me. I still felt Windy’s presence. Where she once sat, she had left three paperback books: Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown, Through The Looking-Glass, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, sticking out of the sand like tiny tombstones.
I was so disappointed. In that instant, the loneliness I always tried so hard to avoid returned. But I straightened up again and walked back to State, determined to find Windy. Even if it took all summer.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Roses for Rox
Jerry hovered over me as I reached into the mailbox at 33 Sage. Still no letter from Nigel. I tried not to look bummed. Inside were the usual third and fourth requests for bill payments. My mom told me she liked to stretch her pennies until the final notice came. I was sure they’d be coming soon.
From inside the house, I could hear the phone ringing off the hook. I left Jerry right there on the street, racing up the porch stairs.
“Hello?” I huffed.
“Haunani Grace Nuuhiwa, where have you been?” My mom’s voice was sharp and angry. I could hear her so loud and clear that I held the receiver away from my ear.
“State,” I said, keeping the phone in front of me as if it were a microphone. What did she think? That I had a supersonic secret telephone with an endless cord that I could plug into a moveable socket and carry around in my pocket so I could always be at her beck and call? The truth was, I liked the way she had started to notice when I wasn’t around. It felt like someone was holding me tight again. As if I were found after being lost.
“Diane brought Rox into the ER this morning. She’s been asking for you.”
“What?” I clutched the phone and pressed it harder against my ear.
“How quickly can you get here?” There was an urgency in my mom’s voice that I rarely heard.
“I’m on my way.”
“Room 315. And … I love you, honey.”
Jerry strolled into the kitchen. “Can I have some water?”
“No,” I said. “We have to go. Rox is at St. John’s.”
I felt a lump in my throat. My lips went dry as I thought about Rox. It seemed like everything always caved in on me.
Jerry was swerving around in his lane. “Do you want me to drive?” I snapped.
“This is all my fault.” Jerry was no longer cloaked in the masculinity that protected him like muscles around a bone. Now he was fluid, like the ocean.
I refused to feel bad for him. I crossed my arms. I thought Jerry might start to cry. I’d like to see salt stains permanently on his face, and I wouldn’t comfort him. I was tougher than Jerry Richmond.
When we got to the backstreets of Santa Monica, where St. John’s was hidden away, I told him, “Wait here.” He parked, then started to get out of the van anyway.
I said, “Stay,” and pushed him back. “Diane’s inside.”
I blamed him for all of this, and it gave me great satisfaction to have the upper hand. He had no choice but to listen to me.
The smell of St. John’s slammed me in the face. It stunk of overcooked carrot medallions, peas, and ammonia. I used my last five dollars to get some end-of-the-day roses for Rox in the gift shop. There was no time for a bow; I had to jam. I raced down the hall to the elevator. Next to the doors was a small statue of a crucified Jesus and a large gold-plated photo of the boss of St. John’s. Underneath the photo were the words Sister Mary Helen O’Shea. She was the one in charge of my mom’s peer review—and the one who always called.
There is a strangeness in hospitals. People try to act normal despite the fear and sadness. In a hospital, nothing is arbitrary. The nurses wear different types of hats, which tell visitors who is important and who isn’t. Every bell ringing and floor number has a meaning. Rox was on the third floor. That’s where the emergency patients go—car crashes, kids with high fevers, and broken bones. The second floor is where the babies are. And up top—well, that’s isolation for patients who are contagious or terminal.
The second I stepped off the elevator, I wanted to run into Rox’s room, but my mom motioned to me. She was standing with Diane at the end of a shiny, white hallway. They were talking to a nun who had a newbie by her side. Their voices lowered as I got closer, until I could barely hear the words coming out of their mouths. When we were finally face-to-face they went silent. Getting the whole story out of this group was going to be hard.
My mom hugged me. I hated the starchy way her clean, pressed uniform felt, but her arms were warm.
“Sister Mary Helen, this is my daughter, Haunani.”
“Oh, how are you feeling? Better, I hope?”
Jean gave me a quizzical look.
Let me tell ya: this nun was not pretty like Julie Andrews; she was a frowner like Rosalind Russell in The Trouble with Angels. She was stout, thick, and dense, with rimmed glasses and crooked, tea-stained teeth. No wonder my mom was terrified of her.
She said, with a bit of a brogue, “By the way, Jean. I think it’s wonderful that you adopted.” Her voice was crisp and tart.
I thought, Are you kidding me? But I knew Sister Mary Helen was important because her picture was next to the one of Jesus, and because she was the one charge of my mom’s job. So I zipped my lips and just stood there.
“Well no, Sister,” my mom said apologetically. “Nani’s father was from Hawaii.”
I wish I could describe for you how nasty that nun looked when she pursed her lips and said, “I see,” then walked away. The nerve. I love Jesus, but I was really beginning to wonder about some of the people who work for him.
I turned to my mom. “I’ve got to go see Rox.”
“Look,” she said. “Rox has had a really hard time, but she’s going to be fine. You get five minutes.” She held her hand up in my face, and she spread her fingers wide as if to make sure I understood what the number five meant. “I’m going to take Diane downstairs to get her some coffee and food.”
Rox’s sister was stiff as a board, staring down the hallway as if she was possessed. Her eyes darted back and forth. Obviously she was looking for Jerry. It was as if she wanted him to show up so she could tear him apart. Diane was consumed with hate. Like a river after a flood, she had changed beyond recognition. Grown-ups are so tragic in stressful situations.
I gave a little knock on Rox’s door. Inside her hospital room there were three beds, but the others were empty. Rox was lying down as a nurse took her pulse. I stood in the doorway, feeling squeamish. A male orderly rushed a bedpan to the bathroom and I heard the toilet flush. Then he dashed past me, nearly knocking me over.
“W
atch where you’re going, Willie,” the nurse commanded as she adjusted the bed. If I ever have to work in a hospital, I thought, better to be a doctor than a nurse or some Willie cleaning up piss.
“Sallow” is a word I have never used in my entire life, but that is the only one that described the way Rox looked. I gasped. She sat up in the bed and tried to strike a pose, then withered back into her pillows. I shuddered at the sight of my true love, who was too shaky to sit up. The person I knew as an immortal and unconquerable leader was now white as a sandstone fossil with some deepwater creature embedded in it, an imprint of something long gone.
“Hi, Nani.” Her voice was weak. She wore a shapeless smock with a checkered pattern. Her own clothes were folded on a chair, and I could see she had been taken to the hospital in her pajamas, the striped ones she wore whenever she was sick. There was an IV hanging above the bed. I wished my memory wasn’t so Virgo sharp. It was going to take me forever to get this picture out of my head.
A little hope came into her puffy, sad eyes when I pulled the roses from behind my back. “Are those from Jerry?” Rox asked.
I felt a sharp pang beneath my ribs. “Yes,” I said. “He told me, uh, to tell you—that he—loves you … a lot!” I didn’t want to say it, but I did it for Rox. And it was worth it. She lit up like a firecracker.
The nurse finally finished her paperwork and pulled the curtain around the bed. She told Rox, “Turn on your side. I’m going to give you a shot of morphine for the pain. Do you want your friend to wait outside?”
“She’s seen my butt before,” Rox said with a sly smile. Luckily, the nurse didn’t get the joke. But I wished I had turned away before seeing the long needle plunge into Rox’s backside.
