3
KAUI, 2001
Kalihi
Okay, so, that whole year. It was like living on the edge of legend again, just like after the sharks, only bigger. Another numb-nuts boy blows his hand off playing with firecrackers like every other New Year’s. Only this one doesn’t end the same way. Blessing said that Keahi said that Skyler-them went to the emergency room that night. And the doctors unwrapped Skyler’s New Year’s hand explosion. Wiped away the blood, right, and underneath was nothing but clean strong skin. His hand like it had never played with fire.
Oh, man. You can imagine, if Keahi was telling Blessing, then people knew about it all the way in, like, Saudi Arabia. Old news. Keahi’d talk about the invention of the wheel like it was hot rumor.
But the arrivals were slow. Something about the news stayed quiet. Neighbors came every now and then. Steady but slow. Some local auntie with her just-woke hairstyle, two-year-old son riding her hip, the son with diabetes, and her saying, We heard some things about Nainoa. And can he help. Or the man who came another time, hapa Korean I think, a size-small shirt stretched over a size-large chest, rubbing his arm, saying stage four had spread all the way to his toes. And can your son help.
Those first times I don’t think Mom knew what to do, she just listened. Eyebrows all crinkled up with sad and let in whoever was talking, went to find Noa in his and Dean’s room. Then the person would go in there with Mom, but soon enough she came back out.
“He said he could only do it alone,” she said that first time.
Later the person would come back out. I don’t know what Noa did but I know when people left they were practically reggae skanking. Every step a rubber-band bounce. Plus their eyes easy, not like before. So he was fixing something.
And so of course people kept coming. Slow but steady. Never a crowd.
One time I saw this: A grown-up lady, talking about early-stage this or that, when she got ready to leave after her visit, she stopped at the kitchen. Where Mom was. Handed her all this cash. I thought Mom would be surprised, like “I can’t possibly take this from you.” But no way. She nodded and took it so easy, like she was checking out a grocery shopper at J. Yamamoto.
Me and Dean and Noa aren’t stupid, we knew there was always stuff Mom and Dad owed. Phone calls all the time where they were negotiating everything from credit cards to the house. It became like a prayer at our house, Our Father who art in debt collection, hallowed be thy pay. When I was in, like, fourth grade, I thought everyone had rent parties. Until I was talking about it at school and the teacher got all wet-eyed. Asked me some things after class.
Do you need help is what she asked, with this sad-serious face. Is everything okay in your family.
And I said, “But you’re a teacher.”
She said, “Now, what does that mean.”
And I was like, “You’re a teacher. What are you going to do, split your food stamps with us?”
But now, with people showing up to see Noa, it’s no more Ross Dress for Less at our house. We’ve even had, like, a family trip to Pearlridge. All of us got to pick out a few things from Gap and Foot Locker. We’ve had a few good ahi dinners at home, too.
* * *
I GUESS MOM let everyone know that we had a family life, they couldn’t just visit whenever they wanted. And, seriously, people listened. It was definitely a Lucky you live Hawai‘i moment: no one ever came around after dinnertime, or even just before, just Mom and Dad at the table running their numbers, envelope of cash. Then Dean coming back from his pickup games at the court, announcing himself with the tamp tamp of his basketball on the sidewalk, the beat of the ball like probably he was inside, bouncing with jealousy.
Came a night like that when I went to Noa’s room. This was maybe four months after people had started coming to see him. He was lying there on his bed, arms limp and hanging. Staring at the ceiling and breathing slow.
“Hey,” I said.
He nodded his head. That was all.
“You okay?” I asked. He rolled over away from me, toward the wall. Which pissed me off. Because it was obvious he wasn’t okay, but no one else seemed like they were asking. And it was obvious he wanted to be asked, and here I was. “Whatever, then,” I said, and started to close the door. Only he said something. Of course. Just as the door was about to close.
“What?” I asked. I came back inside the room. All basketball posters and rap stars on Dean’s side, robots and sword dudes clutched by big-chee-chee princesses on Noa’s side. “You wouldn’t understand if I told you,” he said.
I should have slapped him. “Sorry if the new King Kamehameha doesn’t have time to talk to one of the villagers,” I said.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“You’re the king,” I said. “You tell me.”
“I didn’t ask for this,” he said, and sat up. Made it seem like getting up took all this effort. “What do you know, anyway? You don’t know what it’s like. None of you do.”
Oh, brother. It was like he didn’t understand how he sounded. “I know you’ve been going around with your nose in the air like me and Dean don’t even live here,” I said. Which was true. Like Mom and Dad didn’t even ask him to do chores, because he needed rest. There’d be times where just him and Mom would go off on a drive to talk about things, only it would also be dinnertime, and so me and Dean would get “treated” to Dad’s Hamburger Helper special. While Noa and Mom come back smelling like Rainbow Drive-In or Leonard’s Bakery, I swear.
“There are—” Noa started. “It’s my head. I have all these things inside, they won’t stop.”
“Like what?”
He asked me did I know how we were living.
I said I did: Mom and Dad were busting their asses, but we were at least better than we were on the Big Island, after the sugarcane plantation shut down. And obviously whatever he was doing now was getting us money, too.
Noa rubbed his face. Hard. Like there was something there he couldn’t get off. “See, that’s what I mean, you don’t understand. ‘We’ doesn’t mean you and me and Mom and Dad. ‘We’ means Hawai‘i. Maybe even more than Hawai‘i.”
“Okay,” I said. “What does that have to do with you?”
“I’m trying to figure that out.” He shrugged. “I think I’m supposed to fix it. That’s what all this is for.”
I squeezed my hands open and closed. Open and closed. “What, only you?” I asked.
He was quiet then. I could see that he was ragged, run wet like the horses back in Waipi‘o Valley, the ones we used to ride that I can only remember by their smell and their feeling. The whole land coming up through their galloping muscles. That was what they were supposed to do: run. But when they ran for long enough they got just empty and blown out, right? Couldn’t even do the one thing they were supposed to. “Yeah,” he said. “Only me.”
And okay, so he was tired. It was hard, because I felt sorry for him, but he was doing that thing where he wanted me to feel like it was my fault—that he was feeling the way he was, and that I couldn’t fix it, and that he was special—all of it my fault. He did that feeling to people a lot, I think. And it worked, mostly, even on me. Except that time it didn’t, because all I could hear was what he thought of me and Dean: nothing. Because he thought he was special.