all too soon. Mom called from the kitchen, “Rani, do the pouthu, I’ll do the vasun.”
“Ok,” I called back. I took out the mop and bucket.
She had no idea what had just happened on the other side of the saloon doors. But that was nothing new. She’s always been oblivious to most things that involve me. Except the piano. That’s the only thing she’s ever really talked to me about—besides what I have to do at the store and restaurant. It’s always been one of two short edicts:
Practice piano.
Play piano.
Anyway, I think she’s been out to lunch with regards to me because she’s been living in Naraka ever since her arranged marriage to my dad seventeen years ago. Living in hell is probably the opposite of the blissful adult life she imagined as a girl growing up in Kenya and Gujarat. Her chance at a happy life was ripped away by my dad and the vaitru he demanded. And here she is still doing his work today.
Though she’s been blind to things happening in my life, I’ve been a gecko clinging to the wall of her life, listening and watching. Arguments with Dad. Phone calls to relatives. Interactions with customers. And without ever having any heart-to-hearts, I’ve picked up many tidbits about her life. I know she wanted to be a doctor. I know about a handsome man she met at her Gujarat college who wanted to marry her. And she him. I know she never wanted to marry my dad. But as this observant gecko has gleaned, her desires didn’t matter. She had to conform to the expectations set forth by her parents and backed by an entire Gujarati culture. They controlled her life. She submitted. It was all chalked up to naseeb. And boy oh boy, was fate cruel to her. Sometimes I wonder if she thinks it’s a fate worse than death.
I rolled the bucket to the back room to fill it up. Mom was immersed in washing a mountainous stack of dishes in two of the gigantic industrial-sized sinks. I added a couple of capfuls of mopping solution to the bucket and tugged at the pull-down faucet. Water gushed out and the sudsy mixture rose.
I gripped the mop handle. I hated to clean. I shoved the bucket like it was a gigantic boulder and I was Sisyphus. When I got to the dining area I surveyed the mess. I blew the loose strands of hair from my face. Napkins, beer bottles, remnants of rice, hamburger steak, and Portuguese bean soup were scattered across the tables and hardwood floor. The soles of my precious hot pink, baby blue, and creamy white Adidas high tops clung to the boards. A strange groan and shudder emanated from my body. It was so bizarre that I decided it should have its own word. A grudder. Or a shroan.
I hate my life.
I freakin’ hate my life.
Then I felt guilty for hating my life because I realized it would never be as bad as my mom’s. Still, I was resentful. I mopped away the tourists’ dinner evidence and their sticky dregs. The monotony of mopping allowed my thoughts to wander. But like always, they returned to my dad. Things had been out of whack. Worse since the roses.
In early August, Pono Kamakou and I, both reps for our senior class of 1992, were at Moana’s Florist. Now I’m definitely not one to front like I know much about Hawaiian culture because I most certainly don’t. But I know that it’s customary in local culture nowadays to present honored guests with lei. So Pono and I were selecting lei for the University of Hawaii at Manoa college admissions officers flying over for an assembly early the next morning.
Incidentally, Pono’s got to be the hottest vice president on the face of the earth. Since I’m president I get to hang with my towering, hunky VP outside of school for official class business like this. In my humble opinion, it’s the biggest perk of being president—a position I was elected to only because no one else ran for it. I’ve been crushing on him since the beginning of junior year. Too bad he’s had a girlfriend pretty much since then. The perfect Emily Angara. Not that it would matter even if he was single because like all Moloka’i boys, he wouldn’t be interested in me even if I was the only girl in school.
Pretending like I was carefully inspecting ti leaf and pikake lei, I was secretly ogling Pono’s amazing brown eyes, silky black hair, and dark, smooth skin. He’s three-quarter Hawaiian, one-eighth Filipino, one-sixteenth Spanish, and one-sixteenth Chinese with the lean, muscular body of a die-hard surfer. Which he is.
The front door creaked open. That’s when I spotted the back of my dad’s head. I knew it was him. He’s the only man on Moloka’i with that jet black coarse wavy Indian hair. Pared down like a round, sculpted Chia Pet. I call it his Indro. He didn’t see me.
Pono dropped the maile lei he’d been looking at and touched my shoulder. He inched closer so that he was standing directly behind me. Then leaning down, his breath warm and sweet, he whispered into my ear, “Isn’t that your dad, Rani?”
Pono’s hands are on my body!
My euphoria burst out like when you drop Mentos into a two-liter bottle of Diet Coke. I took a deep breath and nodded. I whispered back, “Wonder why’s he in this place.”
Dad picked out a bouquet of a dozen red roses. My heart began beating like war drums and my thoughts raced like the dude Pheidippides from that Robert Blacking poem.
I knew.
He never bought flowers for my mom. Ever. Plus they’d been fighting more than usual.
Dad sashayed over to the line at the cash register. He looked as happy as that day last April, the first time he came home at 4 a.m. The night before he told me he’d be out late at a water activist meeting. I saw him creep back into the house early in the morning. He was like a teenager trying to sneak in without waking his parents. Not that I’d ever done that because the only reason I’d be up at that hour is for homework. Which I happened to be doing since 3 a.m. that morning. As he tiptoed past my room, I saw the spark in his eye. That spark was the first time I noticed something had changed. I knew fighting to preserve Moloka’i’s water from the careless clutches of the Ranch and Kaluakoi Resort made him feel like he had a purpose. But elated? That seemed sketchy. He was like a different person. Not the stoic Gujarati man I knew.
And Dad’s been pretty much MIA since then. At home less and less. Working less and less, and recently not at all. All the while, Mom’s continued to work at the store and restaurant twelve to eighteen hours a day, seven days a week. I’ve maintained my after school and weekends work hours.
Last year he’d gotten into water activism as a way to “stick it to the Man.” That’s how he described it to me. “The Man” was the Moloka’i Ranch. The Ranch owns about one-third of the island and most of the west end, including the land, houses, and business buildings in the tiny town of Maunaloa. Back in the day, when the Ranch leased a large portion of their land to Libby McNeill & Libby and Del Monte, Maunaloa mainly housed pineapple workers. Today the Ranch rents the houses to their own employees, Kaluakoi employees, and former pineapple workers or their families. And they rent the store and restaurant buildings to my parents.
Dad’s pissed because the Ranch didn’t renew our lease on the store or restaurant, leaving us only two more years to run the businesses. Well, only one more year now. Dad’s been fixated on revenge ever since. He knew that the Ranch and Kaluakoi had been wanting full access to Moloka’i’s only source of fresh water to irrigate and expand the tourist potential of the dry west end. He also knew that many people on Moloka’i didn’t want the island’s limited water supply to be wasted on tourist development projects. Especially when many Hawaiian homesteaders didn’t yet have access to the water for their agriculture. I’m no local but I’ve always agreed that the water should be for the Native Hawaiians first and foremost. You don’t have to be
