Banana Split

by Josi S. Kilpack

  She stopped for a breath, but when she opened her mouth to continue she realized she’d already said too much. Mr. Olie was looking at her as though she were something confusing, something untrustworthy, and Sadie felt her heart racing at having allowed herself to become so vulnerable. She snatched the list back and shoved it in her bag, wondering if this was how Charlie had felt when she’d told him she had no answers for him. And hadn’t Mr. Olie already made it clear that he’d made up his mind about Noelani? He didn’t want to believe anything different.

  “I’m sorry I interrupted your lunch,” she said quickly as she stood and tried to keep her back straight. She knew she should look him in the eye, leave a strong impression, but she didn’t feel strong anymore and so she kept her eyes on the floor. She felt ridiculous. “Sorry,” she mumbled again as she stepped away from the table.

  She gripped the strap of her bag that hung across her chest and hurried toward the street, wondering why she’d come at all. She needed to get back home. She had to wind around some other buildings before she got to the sidewalk, but once there, she realized she’d lost her bearings. Where was she? Where was the nearest bus stop? She dug in her bag for the bus schedule, then checked her watch to see that she had twenty minutes until the next bus came to the Rice Shopping Center stop where she’d originally gotten off. Could she hold on to her sanity for twenty minutes? Wait, then she’d have the bus ride and the walk home—she’d have to hold on to her sanity a little longer. And she didn’t know where the Rice stop was from here.

  Her hands started to shake, and she swallowed again. She started walking, looking for a landmark that would tell her how to get back to the bus stop. She felt as though everyone were wondering who she was and what she was doing. She had to look as out of place as she felt right now. What if Mr. Olie went to the police with what she’d told him? She hadn’t emphasized that Charlie was away from his foster home the way she should have. Would Mr. Olie follow up on it? Should she go to the police now that Mr. Olie hadn’t responded the way she’d expected he would? She’d been so sure contacting him was the best choice.

  She reached the corner of the block and turned in a slow circle, trying to figure out where she was and holding back frustrated tears. She had no business trying to do any of this.

  An awning a few blocks down the street looked like it might be familiar, but as Sadie stepped off the curb, a dark truck pulled in front of her. She stepped back quickly, gasping at what felt like a close call even though she was at least four feet away from any real danger.

  The passenger side window rolled down, and Mr. Olie leaned across the seat. “Where you headed?”

  “Puhi,” she said after a moment. Lifting up the bus schedule, she added, “I got turned around and don’t know where my stop is.”

  He pulled the door release and pushed it open. “Maybe we have a little more to say to one another.”

  Sadie looked at the open door, questioning whether or not she was safe, but realized she didn’t feel any safer on the streets of Lihue. And she was too tired and overwhelmed to turn down a helping hand. She sat down in the passenger seat and pulled the door shut with a snap.

  “Thank you,” she said sheepishly, feeling like a child.

  He nodded, then checked his blind spot before pulling into traffic, giving the two-fingered “shaka” wave to another car that let him in. Sadie tried to relax, but kept clenching the strap of her bag nervously. She waited for Mr. Olie to start the conversation, but he didn’t. Maybe he was taking his time because he was sorting out his own thoughts.

  “There’s a stop,” Sadie said, recognizing one she’d passed on her way into town.

  “I’ll drop you off in Puhi,” he said.

  “Oh. Okay.” She tried not to admit to feeling a little freaked out, but she was a little freaked out.

  “What’s your name?” he asked as he pulled onto the Kaumualii Highway toward Puhi.

  “Sadie Hoffmiller,” she said, not remembering whether she’d introduced herself at the restaurant. Before Kaua’i she would have been certain she had—she was always well mannered—but so many things had fallen by the wayside lately.

  “Where are you staying?”

  “The Coral Coast Condos.”

  “On Valley Street?”

  Sadie turned to look at him. “You know it?”

  “Kaua’i is not a big island, and I’ve visited homes in every neighborhood at some time or another.”

  “Oh,” Sadie said, shifting uncomfortably. “Do you live in Lihue?”

  “I’ll check in on Charlie,” Mr. Olie said instead of answering her question. “How much money did he take?”

  “Not quite a hundred dollars.”

  “Do you want it back?”

  “No,” she said quickly, thrilled to know Mr. Olie was going to do something to help her. “I don’t care about that; I just want to make sure he’s okay.”

  He was looking forward, still burdened and tired, but thoughtful too. “Before Charlie was removed from his mother’s care, he was on his own a lot, and sometimes she didn’t buy food. He’s continued to struggle with the impulse to steal and hoard since being in foster care. It’s something we’re working on, but I would rather use this as a means to find him better help than getting the police involved. If you’re not planning on pressing charges, I think I can get this worked out without having to risk him being sent to detention—which is the next step if this ends up on his record. He already ran once, and it’s only because he’s in one of my best homes that they allowed him back.”

  “Thank you for checking on him,” Sadie said. “I feel awful for what he’s been through.”

  “I do too,” he said. “He doesn’t deserve the life he’s been handed.”

  Sadie nodded and wondered if Mr. Olie was going to say more, but he remained silent. Sadie followed his lead.

  When they reached Puhi, she asked if he would drop her off by the local market instead of at her condo a few blocks further west. Mr. Olie pulled over at the corner of the small business district. She thanked him as she stepped away from the car. She expected him to say something more, but he just nodded his head again. She shut the door, and a moment later, he pulled back into the street, disappearing around a bend in the road.

  Well, that was interesting, she thought.

  Sadie adjusted her bag as her phone dinged to alert her to an incoming text message. It was from Gayle.

  I land in Honolulu at 8:00 am Friday. Kaua’i by 10:30. Will send more info later.

  Sadie texted back a smiley face, but then she caught her reflection in a storefront window. She was so different from the woman Gayle had said good-bye to in Garrison three months ago. Sadie raised a hand to her head, where a thousand little hairs had come out of her bun and corkscrewed around her face. She didn’t want Gayle to see her like this.

  She stopped walking and looked at the shops around her on the main street of Puhi. She hadn’t noticed the sign for The Salon before, but now she moved forward and looked at a paper sign in the window that said “Walkins Welcome.”

  There is no way I can let Gayle see what I’ve allowed myself to become, she told herself. With that in mind, she took a deep breath and pulled open the door.

  Chapter 14

  Even though Sadie had made the conscious decision to go into the salon, she realized that part of her hoped they wouldn’t be able to help her so she could feel good about the idea but not have to follow through. Fortunately—or unfortunately depending on the perspective she took from any one moment to the next—a Filipina stylist by the name of Lou was just finishing up a trim and could help Sadie right away.

  “I was planning to go home early,” Lou said as she put some gel in the hair of the woman sitting in front of her. “But all I’ve got is my no-good boyfriend waiting for me so I may as well stay and earn some rent money.”

  Lou was open and friendly, and Sadie tried not to be terrified of her. Two other hairdressers and a nail tech were bustling aroun
d the salon and chatting with their customers. One conversation was in a language Sadie didn’t recognize, maybe Filipino since both women seemed to be of that ethnicity; she hoped they weren’t talking about her. It had been a long time since she’d been around so many busy people, and she found their energy surprising.

  “So, you want it colored?” Lou asked after Sadie took a seat in the chair facing the mirror. She took Sadie’s hair out of the bun; it looked even worse than she remembered it. Lou ran her fingers through the jagged curls, her fingers catching where the split ends tangled together.

  “I want whatever will fix it,” Sadie said.

  The stylist rubbed a section of hair between her fingers. “Blonde?”

  “An attempt,” Sadie said, embarrassed. “It looked nice for the first two weeks.”

  “It always does,” Lou said, still smiling as she appraised Sadie carefully. “Blonde is a tricky color, though. Requires maintenance, yeah?”

  Sadie nodded. The salon smelled like acetone and perm solution, zinging her nose, which wasn’t used to such aromas.

  “How do you feel about giving into the gray?” Lou touched the two inches of grown-out roots that connected Sadie’s brassy-ash-colored blonde to her scalp.

  “I’ve never thought about it.” Sadie had always equated gray hair with old women, and yet she knew a handful of women her age who had transitioned to all gray and looked amazing. Pam Sandival from the library committee had gone gray in her late twenties, and never colored it a single day. Now, in her early fifties, her hair was snowy white and beautiful. Then there was Paula Deen—she was a knockout, too. “Wouldn’t you have to cut off all the color? I don’t want it that short.” Short hair would make her look like a man, she was certain, and that wasn’t a look she was going for.

  “We can blend it with some other colors while you grow it out so you can keep some length, then work with it until the transition is complete.”

  Sadie had forgotten to mention she’d only be in Kaua’i for another month.

  “If I trim it up, maybe to about here”—Lou lifted the last couple of inches of Sadie’s hair off her neck, so that the bulk of her hair was to her chin—“and put in some fun, choppy layers that would give you some sass without taking you all the way to punk, I could weave in some brown, black, and platinum. That would give you a more gradual change toward your regular gray.” She dropped the hair and inspected the roots again. “You have really healthy hair, and it’s not thinning. With the right product, we could control your curl just enough to keep it full without being too . . . amplified, if you know what I mean.”

  “Really?” Sadie said, looking at herself and wishing she could see the vision this girl had.

  “Gray’s all the thing right now, anyway, and you can always go back, to, uh, blonde if you don’t like it, but, honestly, I think you can pull off gray better than most.” She ran her fingers through Sadie’s hair again. It was strange to be touched after so much isolation. “You’ve got great texture and tone, and with a little training on how to style your hair here on the island, I think you’d be really happy.”

  Sadie looked at herself in the mirror, really looked, and made peace with the idea of bringing a little more of the real Sadie to the surface. She imagined the cut Lou was suggesting, and then imagined people seeing her looking that way. Her goals stuck to the fridge at the condo came to mind again: Do something brave every day. She’d already done many brave things today, what was one more?

  “Let’s do it,” Sadie said, smiling widely at the stylist’s reflection in the mirror, excited to become the woman Lou saw.

  Lou gave her a little shoulder hug from behind. “Ono,” she said with a sharp nod and a bright smile.

  Lou headed to the back of the salon as one nail customer left and another one came in, a haole like Sadie. The other two stylists started talking about a mutual friend whose husband had left her for reasons undisclosed. A beauty shop always seemed a hotbed of female gossip. The stylists discussed several motives but eventually concluded it had to be another woman. The man had always been a dog. Their clients agreed, and they moved to the next topic—the drug-seeking helicopters that kept waking up one of the women’s children during nap time.

  “So a farmer grows a few pakalolo plants to make up for the shortfall with his mango trees,” one of the stylists said as she pulled a lock of hair up from her client’s head and snipped off the ends. “The aupuni need to legalize it and get it over with.”

  True, Sadie had been a hermit, but she was still aware of the relaxed attitude many people had toward marijuana here on Kaua’i. Kids wore T-shirts with the big green leaf, and many cars sported green-and-yellow bumper stickers that read “2450 steps closer to legal!” referring to bill 2450 that had reduced possession of small amounts of marijuana from a misdemeanor to a civil infraction. Sadie wondered if the amount of the drug found in Noelani’s things was within that limit. Would a civil offense have impeded her reunification with Charlie?

  “Ah, but to make it legal will bring every pothead from the mainland to our beaches—our neighborhoods.” The other woman shook her foil-wrapped head. “People who need it can get their blue cards; no one else should be messing with it. It’s pilikia.”

  Sadie didn’t know what pilikia meant, but she had a Hawaiian dictionary at the condo and hoped she’d remember the word long enough to look it up. She had her own opinions on the topic of legalizing marijuana, but she was a malihini, and it wasn’t really any of her business so she let the words move around her, educating her on the community she was sort of a part of.

  “Those cards are a great start,” the nail technician inserted, filing her client’s nails in a rhythmic pattern as she shook her head. “My nephew has that Crohn’s disease, got himself a card to deal with the pain and now he can hold a job.”

  “Well, my neighbor has a card too,” the foil-headed lady said. “And he beats his wife when he’s high. His two sons toke up with him, now that it’s legal to do so. I say double the helicopters and draw a hard line—no drugs on Kaua’i. We have the best beaches in the world and the beauty of Mount Wai’ale’ale. What do we need drugs to improve for us?”

  “Oh,” the first stylist said with a laugh, “you are not paying attention. Fort Street gets closer every day, sistah, and a little pot at the end of the day is nothing compared to the things happening on this island. It’s ridiculous that the government gives a blue card, but makes people buy from a corner dealer. They support the very thing they say they are working against. If pot were legal, they could spend the time and the money to find the real drug dealers—the ones who are seducing our children with their meth every single day. Instead, we arrest single moms and out-of-work farmers for trying to put bread on the table.” She shook her head and clucked her tongue. “The real pilikia slides right past the KPD.”

  “All right,” Lou said as she reappeared from the back, balancing three plastic bowls in her hands and taking Sadie’s attention away from the discussion. Lou carefully transferred the bowls to the counter before pulling out a stack of foil papers from a drawer and arranging them the way she wanted them.

  “This is going to be great,” Lou said, flashing Sadie a bright smile. “I just love working with brave women.”

  Brave. The word washed through Sadie, bringing with it hope that she could be a brave woman again. As Lou started brushing the color on Sadie’s hair and folding over the foils, Sadie allowed herself to look at her successes today. She’d learned about Noelani, and she’d found Mr. Olie and passed on what she knew about Charlie. She’d agreed to have Gayle come, and she was getting her hair done for the first time in months.

  She let the pride wash over her as she redirected Lou’s questions about herself back to Lou’s life instead. It worked, and before she knew it, Sadie was hearing all about how Lou met her boyfriend who, though he drove her crazy with his lack of motivation to work, was the love of her life—ke aloha o ku’u ola. Sadie listened to Lou talk, concentrated on
her breathing, and watched herself be transformed.

  Chapter 15

  Sadie kept catching her reflection in the windows of the shops she passed on her way to the market two hours later. It was difficult to trust her own judgment, but she thought she really liked what Lou had done. The colors she’d woven in worked well together and gave Sadie a kind of salt-and-pepper look that blended into the existing gray of her roots and darkened on the way to her ends, which Lou had showed her how to flip out. Her hair was layered and felt light on her head, and yet the cut gave her a fullness that seemed to balance out her body. Lou had also sold Sadie $30 worth of product that would allow her to do the same thing herself, but Sadie was doubtful it would look as good as when Lou did it.

  It was nearly four o’clock, and she hadn’t eaten since her bowl of cereal that morning—and the shoyu chicken and rice in the middle of the night—so at the market, Sadie filled her basket with things she hadn’t wanted to commit herself to before now. She added flour and sugar to her list, having decided to make macadamia nut pancakes with Tanya’s coconut syrup for dinner. It was one of half a dozen recipes Tanya had taped to the inside of her kitchen cabinets for easy reference. Sadie had made the meal once, when she had first arrived, and enjoyed it, but then things had gotten dark, and even pancakes felt like too much work. But she was brave today. And hungry.