by Lisa Freeman
“Mo’bettah outside,” she said. I had never seen Jean touch the urn, and I didn’t like how pissed she was.
“You don’t need to see any more of this,” Annie said as she guided me back down the stairs. “Your muddah’s a crazy pupule.”
I wasn’t going to argue with Annie Iopa.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Oh, you’ll see,” Annie replied, patting my back.
She was being so nice, I put out of my head the fact that I hadn’t heard from her in almost a year. I had forgotten how graceful Annie was. As I followed her down the stairs, she counted the money and talked over her shoulder. “Mike Kei is such a focka. He wouldn’t pay me, so your mom owed me. I’m the only one who kept the Jones open. Memba?” She kept slipping between Pidgin and English. I forgot how she did that. It made me homesick.
“Where are my fish?” I asked.
“Gone.”
“What about the tikis?”
“Gone. Tanks to your Uncle Mike.” She tucked the money and something else into her purse. Then Annie looked down the street and saw Jerry leaning on the car next to Solomon. She pinched my arm and said, “Eh, all right, Haunani. You made that local boy your own. You give him sauce?”
“Sex?! No.”
“Good, ’cause he’s da bomb. Make him wait.”
I let Annie think whatever she wanted about Jerry and me. I could tell by how Solomon and Jerry were moving, their arms stretching and twisting, that they were talking waves. Jerry had a gleeful bounce as he chatted with the Mākaha elite. He was laughing so hard, his face was streaked with tears.
“Aw, he’s all buss’up.”
Great, Jerry was drunk. He stopped in his tracks when he saw us coming down the stairs. He gawked at Annie’s thick waist-long hair, tan legs, and short skirt.
“Honey Girl!” he yelled at her.
Solomon nodded. “Big time, brah,” he said.
When I got close enough to Jerry, he wrapped his arms around me and said, “Nani, you’re a Honey Girl, too.”
He was hugging me too close, with a tender touch. For the first time, I could feel how soft his skin was, and I could hear Rox’s voice telling me how it made her cum. Jerry pointed to Annie. “She’s a Honey Girl,” he repeated.
Solomon was cracking up at how drunk Jerry was. Too loaded to drive home. I untangled myself, walked over to the van, and took the keys out of the ignition.
“Didn’t I tell you not to drink that?” I said, stomping back with both my hands on my hips. I looked Jerry right in the face and wagged my finger. I enjoyed scolding him.
“Hey, you nuha?” Solomon said.
Yeah, I guess you could say I was bent out of shape over Jerry getting drunk. But, as was typical with guys as ridiculously fine as Jerry, his mellow demeanor had wooed not only Solomon, but Annie, too, who stepped in closer to get a better look.
She sniffed him like he was a dog, then had him do a little spin so she could appreciate him from every angle. She took the top hat and put it on her head, then said, smiling, “You partying?” We all laughed. Annie squeezed Jerry’s cheek. “Maika‘i.” That meant she thought he was hot.
“Yeah, I love you, too,” said Jerry, as he kissed her hand like a real gentleman.
That’s when Solomon kind of rolled between them and said, “Eh, no bugga my wife.”
Did he say wife? He couldn’t have.
“Oops, sorry, man.” Jerry crawled into the back seat of Solomon’s car and said, “Well, good night, everyone.” He almost put his head down, but before he could, something snapped him out of his drunken stupor. I literally saw the color drain from his face.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
He tilted his head and stared into a dark corner of the back seat. I followed his eyes. In a plastic laundry basket, on top of a blue blanket, lay a teeny sleeping baby. My jaw dropped. Jerry looked numb. Where did that come from? I thought. He stretched his hand out and touched the little body wrapped in a dish towel.
“Is it a boy?” he asked.
“Yes,” Annie emphasized, “It is.”
My eyes popped open. “Whose is it?”
Annie looked like I had snapped a rubber band on her butt. She whipped her hair to one side and tied it in a knot on her head in one motion. “Mine,” she said, like I was some kind of idiot. She shoved me to the side with a hurricane force and quickly reached past Jerry to get the baby.
Then Jerry got all drunk-acting again. No one can fight off Swipe once it’s got your brain.
“I was gonna have a son,” he said. “Teach him to swim and surf. Get him little trunks and a baseball bat.” He held his hands over his mouth, closed his eyes, and shook his head back and forth, slower and slower until he drifted away.
Annie was instantly blissed out when she got the baby in her arms. I peeked at her through my hair as she gazed at him. “How old is he?” I asked.
The lights went on in her eyes as she leaned down to kiss his forehead gently. “Six weeks,” she said.
It was clear there was no space left in her life for me. I had been erased.
“Look, we came to the mainland to introduce this little guy to the Kekahuna family,” Annie said.
I got it. I wasn’t even part of the plan. Annie and I weren’t going to start hanging out again. She had gotten what she had come for, and it wasn’t me. It was money. Once and for all, I was pushed to see her for who she was, and not who I wanted her to be.
“I named this little guy Jimmy Star,” Annie said. “After your dad, Nani.”
Just like that, my mood flip-flopped. I was so happy to hear my dad’s name was going to live on, I didn’t care who had it. I wanted to jump in her arms, but they were full.
“You get it now, don’t you? We need the bucks to get Jimmy home.”
I was going to say, Sure, yeah, but Solomon interrupted, and the smell of cigar smoke—and what must have been a dirty diaper—made me back up as he said, “Guess we’re giving Jerry a ride.” He swooped down and took Jimmy from Annie.
“Easy!” she demanded, looking like she could have bit his head off. Solomon gingerly squeezed into the passenger seat.
“I’ll see you back home someday, yeah?” Annie asked, never taking her eyes off the baby.
“Yeah, sure,” I said, without thinking. I didn’t want to ever go back upstairs and see Jean, but I didn’t want to stay where I wasn’t welcome either. I was stuck between a rock and a hard place, and I knew I’d never find my way back to the kind of kindness I’d once had—especially from Annie.
“Where dis guy live?”
“Rustic Canyon.”
“Where?”
“Just go that way,” I said pointing. “Aloha.” I looked Annie in the eyes and waited until she finally said it back.
“Aloha.”
And then they were gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The Big Picture
I was just about to go inside when Annie put on the brakes and backed up. She got out of the car and looked at me long and hard. It weirded me out.
“What’s wrong?”
“Eh, Haunani. I gotta give you this.”
I hoped she was going to hand me back some cash, but instead she pulled a crumpled newspaper clipping out of her purse. “Since you’re gonna come home someday, you gotta know.”
It was from the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and had a big photo. Annie unfolded the clipping. The moon was so full, I had no trouble seeing the headline. It read, “Landmark Java Jones Demolished for High-Rise Condos.” And there, right next to the article, was a picture of a proud Uncle Mike standing in a vacant lot.
After a second, I realized I wasn’t breathing. I sighed and clasped my coral necklace. My mouth went dry, but I didn’t make a sound. It was a total shocker.
All I could muster was a joke. “Wow,” I said sarcastically. “My fish really are gone.”
“Sorry, Haunani.” Annie tapped my shoulder with just her fingertips. “I really miss
your papa. He was ohana, real family, to everyone who worked at the Jones.”
I wondered if she really meant it. The whole subject hurt too much to even think about, so for the second time in the night I found myself changing the topic.
“Can you do me a favor?” I asked her as I looked at Jerry in the back seat, his arm around the empty basket. He was so sweet and peaceful. “Jerry is going to Oahu to surf and—”
“Solomon will take care of him.” She finished my sentence for me. “He’ll be ohana.” She gave me the shaka sign, thumb to the sky, pinky to the earth, connecting them both. At least I knew one of us would be taken care of.
As Annie drove away, one thing was for sure: she was never coming back, and I’d probably never see her again. The smell of her red ginger perfume lingered in the air.
Jerry would leave next, and I bet he’d never come back, either. I stood looking up at the stars, trying to remember which constellation was which. The V-shaped stars were the tips of Taurus’s horns, about to smash down on Orion.
Snap. My reality broke. It would never be whole again. Too many had said goodbye. Too many were gone for good. I uncrumpled the newspaper. Here’s what it said:
Developer Mike Kei is turning the location of the once-popular Java Jones into a 20-story condominium. “Hawaii is on the rise,” he was quoted as saying. “But we must preserve our culture.” He credited the tourist boom for the increased housing demand.
Preserve Hawaiian culture? I thought. As if. He was the one most responsible for destroying it.
The Lurline steamship used to be the only way to get to Hawaii, but now, planes were shoveling tourists into Waikiki nonstop. Honolulu was growing faster than any other city in the United States. Thanks to folks like Uncle Mike, I wouldn’t be surprised if Oahu sank from the weight of so many new people. I ripped the article into tiny pieces. I stomped and spit on them.
33 Sage was quiet. Suddenly I remembered Jean, still drunk inside. If it weren’t for her and this stupid house, Uncle Mike would have never been able to get the Jones away from us. I charged up the steps, two at a time, and cleared my throat so I could scream louder. I felt like a loaded gun, cocked and ready to fire.
I was not going to take Jean’s drunken BS. She was a despicable person. A liar and loser like her pal, Nixon. I was going to make her take responsibility for getting drunk again and destroying the Jones—and my life. Even if I had to kick it out of her. This time I was taking no prisoners.
I threw open the door. Jean was kneeling on the rug in the living room. A portion of the urn’s contents had spilled out in front of her. She was hysterical, trying to gather everything up by grabbing at the green shag rug.
My need to annihilate her deflated as a flash of horror replaced it. I couldn’t look at her and be unswayed. I was watching my mom disintegrate—and now she knew the awful, despicable thing I’d done.
I knew saying sorry wouldn’t cut it, but I was sorry. So sorry. I stared down at her and told myself that when she disowned me I’d never be able to escape the memory of this moment. I would be completely alone. She’d never talk to me again. And I couldn’t blame her.
What could I say to make her forgive me?
She looked up, sobbing, the rough sand filtering through her fingers. “Some of Daddy fell out. He smells like the ocean. I didn’t know ashes were so gritty.”
“Oh, Jesus.” She was so wasted she didn’t know. The truth was right in front of her—she was literally holding it—but she couldn’t see it. She tried to funnel a handful of sand back in the urn. “I’ll take care of this,” I told her.
I felt sick inside, but so incredibly relieved. I hated myself for that.
Snot dripped down Jean’s face. I helped her up. She bumped against the wall as we moved toward her bed. I had to be the grown-up again.
Finally, I got it, loud and clear: no one was coming to rescue me. If I needed something, I would have to make it happen. No one would ever do it for me. I had to take care of myself.
Jean collapsed onto the bed. I had never realized how drunk someone could get. So drunk that she didn’t notice the wrinkly little leaves, tiny shells, or cherry pit scattered through the sand I’d used to replace Dad’s ashes. I picked up the wineglass and half-drained tumbler of vodka from beside her bed.
I would have given anything to come up with some way to explain what I’d done. But there was no excuse. For the first time ever, I understood that there is no way to sugarcoat shame.
I told myself:
Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.
Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.
Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.
Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.
Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.
Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.
Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.
I hated crying. It was like throwing up to me, and I avoided it at all costs. Even so, this was hard to swallow. My jaw went tight, and the back of my throat felt too narrow.
I ran into my room and curled into a little ball. When the first tear fell down my cheek, I wiped it away. But in no time, I was sobbing. When I finally stopped, my lower back hurt and my throat was sore. As soon as I could see straight, I headed into the kitchen to get a mop and pail.
I cleaned to repent. I cleaned to make my mom healthy again. I cleaned to change. I cleaned to fix the mess I’d made. I cleaned to make it better, until the whole house smelled like Ajax.
Only then would I allow myself to think about the Java Jones. It had just been a dark cocktail lounge with low-slung bamboo chairs. A cave, really. But a special cave, with timber floors and curtains of beads that shimmered when you walked through them. It was a place where you could be yourself and forget time. All that was left of it were a few Mai Tai mugs, some swizzle sticks, and a couple tablecloths from the Rendezvous Room.
I gathered up my food and plates and hid them farther back in the cabinet, where I kept my unopened pack of cocktail napkins from the Jones with the words: Ain’t no big ting.
I was panicked by the possibility that Jean might actually find out that I had stolen Dad’s ashes someday. Since she was totally passed out, I snuck into her room, grabbed some Super Bonder from one of her drawers, took the urn, and sealed it up. It would never spill out again. Then I put it back on the table next to her bed and tiptoed out of the room.
I needed to make a fresh start. Reclaim my summer, and my life. I stood over the kitchen sink holding Jean’s bottle of vodka. I had found it hidden in the freezer right after I discovered a fifth of gin floating in the toilet bowl.
I was just about ready to pour them down the drain when the thought occurred to me: I could drink this stuff and—poof! Nothing would hurt as much, and the chatter in my head would stop.
I could literally feel my mom’s sickness churning inside of me. I wanted a drink. I needed a drink. And then I remembered the quaaludes hidden outside. I took a flashlight and went to the rock they were hidden under. I laid them in the palm of my hand and counted out twelve. As I looked at my hand holding the pills, I saw that Windy’s phone number had blurred into a single black circle. Everything in me just went thump. It was a terrible feeling. Losing her number was the last straw.
I really wanted to take the pills, but I put them back in the baggie.
I locked the door and looked at the Benson & Hedges butts, stained with Jean’s orange lipstick, in an overflowing ashtray by the sink. I picked one up and straightened it out. There was tobacco still inside. I needed this cigarette. The only problem was, I knew when I was done smoking it, my bad thoughts would still be there, and I would just hate myself more.
The bottle smelled stronger than a full tank of gas. I put it to my lips, but another thought came to me: if I took one sip, I would end up lik
e Jean—passed out in a room with the TV on. No matter how much I drank, the memories of tonight and the lies I told would just keep coming back.
I poured the contents of both bottles down the drain, stuck the quaaludes in my purse, and emptied the ashtrays into the trash. If I didn’t stop before I started, I was doomed.
I paced the kitchen. I’d have to get a job. If Jean got a bad review or was fired, I’d have to be able to buy food for myself. Cigarettes were thirty-five cents in the vending machine. If I didn’t smoke, I could save lots of money, and with five dollars a week, I could get more than a dozen eggs, a pound of sugar for sixty-five cents, and bacon for eighty-five cents, and a lot more—like peanut butter and bread. I’d have to take those babysitting offers seriously if I was going to support myself.
I repeated, “Everything will be all right,” as I patted the side of my face gently like my dad used to do. That made me sad, too. I could feel tears starting to trickle down my face again. No crying. I was furious with myself. Get tough, cream puff. That’s what the soldiers used to say.
I closed my bedroom door and prayed to Nigel’s friendly version of Jesus to protect me from Jean, from all the cigarettes I wanted to smoke, and from the vodka and gin I hated but would drink by the quart to make the hurt go away. I paced some more and pounded the bed. I held the rosary I kept pinned to the wall, but there was no relief. I was desperate for salvation—anything. Then I got really hopeless, dropped to my knees, and threw myself onto the carpet, praying big time.
Instantly, I knew what to do.
I knew the one thing that would save me.
I reached under my bed and pulled out my board.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Caught Inside
I ran to State Beach clutching my board, wet suit, and a change of clothes. I didn’t stop until my feet touched the water. I threw my stuff under the lifeguard station. State was deserted at night—except for a few gay guys and Lōlō, the local bum. He was talking to himself. His weird, stocky dog lingered by his side as he stood over a trash can like it was a buffet, eating something that looked like potato puree from a Dixie cup.
