Lots of pics from the north shore yeah?
Pics of PROS. Not you. LMAO.
I reply:
Fo real.
“Pizza’s ready,” Dad calls.
Kai cartwheels into the dining room and lands squarely on his chair. “Great. But what are you all going to eat?”
Mom comes to the table and glances over at our luggage in the corner. “What’s in those bags, you guys? Are you going to O`ahu or running off to the Peace Corps?”
Two big backpacks and a couple of carry-ons lean against each other near the front door, stuffed to the gills with gear. Dad wants to camp at least one night and then climb O`ahu’s Stairway to Heaven in the Koolau Range. I saw a stretch of the Stairway once from the highway. It looks like Frodo’s climb into Mordor.
My parents have mellowed a little since I was forced to quit gymnastics. They want me to have a normal life—as long as I wear a vest, and Dad is watching, they allow me to surf, even though the doctor doesn’t approve. Climbing the Stairway to Heaven is another example of how lax they can be. We’ll have gear, of course. Ropes and harnesses.
Now if I can just get the doctor to finally let me drive …
“There’re duffel bags stuffed in, too,” Dad says. “We hardly ever get over there. Might as well do some shopping.”
“Kai.” Mom is setting the table. “Go into the garden, dear, and pick us a salad?”
The ubiquitous sound of the coqui frogs grows louder when he opens the door. Ubiquitous is one of Dad’s words. It means “everywhere.” Dad actually studies coquis. They’re not supposed to be on the Hawaiian Islands at all. They’re an invasive species. A few years back, the Hawaiian night sounded completely different. Then a Hilo big-box store garden center accidentally brought them to the island. Because they have no natural predators, you can now find three frogs for every square meter of rain forest. They drown out all other critters. “Coqui? Coqui?” Everyone’s waiting for the tipping point, wondering when the ecosystem will crash. Well, not everyone, I guess. Maybe just my parents and their geekiest friends.
Kai returns with a bowl of greens. “Kau kau time!” We sit at the table and my parents pour themselves wine. We divide up the pizza and practice our traditional moment of silence. Grandpa knocks on the door just as we dig in.
“Tūtū!” Kai shouts, running to the door. He pulls Grandpa to the table.
“Hi, Dad,” Mom says. “Trip wen good?”
Mom’s pidgin, the local Hawaiian slang, bubbles up whenever Grandpa’s around. I understand pidgin pretty well, but I hardly use it. Speak it wrong around a local and you’ll get laughed out of town.
Grandpa shrugs. “All good. Construction delays.”
“Pizza?” Dad asks.
Grandpa shakes his head. “House calls on the way. Everyone offered food.”
“Tending to the flock,” Dad says.
Grandpa’s become our kahuna, or spiritual counselor. He’s big on keeping old ways alive in the new world. Even keeps a blog about it. He’s tall and thin with gray hair, and is strong, calm, and thoughtful. He served in the navy, and he remains a great swimmer and paddler. After the navy he was a cop on Maui.
He turns to me. “Evening, Mo`opuna. You set?”
“I suppose.”
“Ho! Nervous, ah?”
Grandpa sees everything. There’s no point in trying to hide it. “Yeah.”
“Well, no worries. You been doing great, yeah?”
“Been doing.” I had my first big seizure—a grand mal—when I was twelve. We were at a baseball game in San Francisco; I fell out of my seat and my whole body shook for three minutes. I don’t remember any of it. We learned that I had also been having little episodes—petits mals—for years. I would often just blank out and stare off into space. My parents wrote it off as “intense daydreaming.” The seizures became frequent when I was thirteen. Then, just before we moved, I started taking a new medicine, which cut both kinds of seizure to only a couple a year.
Mom gives me a comforting squeeze. “I know the tests won’t be fun, but keep your eye on the prize: one pill a day instead of two, and—maybe—your driver’s license.”
The clinical trial will go like this: When we get to O`ahu, I’ll stop my meds. The next day my trial dosage starts, a stronger medication that’s not on the market yet. I won’t know if it’s the real deal or a placebo. But if I have a grand mal, the trial will stop and I’ll resume my current meds. I’m super nervous about the potential of ending up on a placebo—I’d effectively be off meds altogether!—but I’m trying to ignore it and focus on the fact that Dad and I are staying in a nice Waikīkī hotel for free the whole week.
“I know.” I try to look excited.
“Well, there’s no shame if the new meds aren’t for you,” Grandpa says. “Pele’s your guardian spirit, yeah? Goddess of lightning.”
I smile. The goddess of lightning and lava and volcanoes. “Yeah. Goddess of the lightning in my head.”
The food disappears. Kai cartwheels away to his room to play video games.
Dad clears the table and settles in at his computer. I help Mom and Grandpa with the dishes, but Mom says, “Lei, you should call it a night. You’ll need plenny energy for the week ahead.”
“You sure?” I glance from Mom to Grandpa.
Grandpa nods. “It’s past my bedtime. I’m going right to sleep.”
“Thanks for coming.” I give him a little hug and lean against him.
“I had to see you off.” He strokes my hair. “I’m very proud of you, Mo`opuna.”
“Thanks, Tūtū.”
I hug Mom, kiss Dad, and head upstairs. I like to read my Hawaiiana book before bed. But my eyelids grow heavy and I drift off.
CHAPTER 2
Most nights, rain falls long and hard, pelting our metal roof. Tonight it wakes me. All the buildings on the Hilo side have aluminum roofing, and during a good cloudburst the town sounds like a radio set on static.
My heart sighs as I listen to the rain. I’m only half Hawaiian, but I want to belong. I can feel the warmth of their akua—the Hawaiian gods and family guardians. When I’m hiking in the high forest with Dad, Kāne, the creator, is in the ohia trees, watching me. And Grandpa’s right: Pele speaks to me—not only when I’m visiting the glowing caldera of Kilauea volcano, but when I’m walking over her ropy black fields of lava, or surfing. I get light-headed and peaceful.
The island itself—it feels like home.
Still, I’ve only lived here for three years, and most Hawaiians around Hilo are slow to accept newcomers. My mind replays the stink-eye I got from Aleka and that other tita on the bluff. Tita. Mean girl. They think I’m a trespasser.
Tami has it worse than I do. She’s full haole, with blond hair and blue eyes. She and her mom moved to the Big Island five years ago. They don’t have any roots here at all.
I envy Kai’s dark complexion: he can pass for Hawaiian. But it’s not the hapa thing that gets in the way so much as the fact that I grew up on the mainland. Too many folks come and go from these islands, taking, taking, taking. The locals are right to be wary.
Still, I hate it when people try to take that feeling of home away from me.
I only talk to Grandpa and Tami about it. The last time Grandpa and I spoke, he said, “You are kama`āina. Child of the land. No one can take that away.”
“Try telling the titas at my school. They say I don’t count, because I grew up in California.”