up in her face and screaming something venomous. Instead, I kept my eyes and head lowered and muttered, “Skeeze.”
“Rani, let’s talk about…” she started to say.
But I wasn’t about to stay and jabber with this plain-Jane-Dad-thief. I ran past them back to the truck. My gut was tight, my chest empty and aching. I fumbled with my keys and finally got the truck door open. I grabbed the steering wheel and hauled my sorry ass onto the seat. I put the pedal to the metal and gassed it all the way home, doing sixty in a thirty-five. Windows down. Warm air blowing through my vagrun var for the last time. Because I knew full well what I was going to do as soon as I got home.
That was last night.
This morning I’m sweeping up the tangled spread of my hair on the deck. I use a small brush to coax it into a trash bag. Then I walk to the railing and prop my elbows on the wide top cap. The Pacific is pacific. So is my mood. My eyes turn to the east. I run my palm over my scalp.
And me and my bald head marvel at the spectacular Sunday—September 8th—sunrise.
“Hey, Patel,” La’akea calls out as she cruises to the back of the store. Her eyes are fixed on the beer chilling in the fridge. She grabs a six-pack of Bud Light and strides to the checkout counter. I don’t realize that I’m gawking at her with a ridiculous grin on my face. Not until she says, “Patel! Why you all da kine l’dat?”
“Huh? Oh. La’akea. Howzit?” I ask, blinking my eyes several times to shake myself out of my lovesick thoughts. Mark left an hour ago. I was in the middle of going over a blow-by-blow of our convo. I was just getting to the part I hadn’t quite figured out, the part after I read him my slam poem.
“I like one pack Marlboro Lights,” La’akea says.
I give her a fake smile as I reach for the cigarettes. I’m kinda annoyed that she interrupted my daydreams. I study her a minute. She looks like a raisin. The dark brown skin on her face is wrinkled and full of sores. She appears years older even though I know she’s only twenty-two. Her teeth resemble short, rusty nails.
She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a shoddy plastic baggy full of pennies, nickels, and dimes. She drops it onto the counter.
La’akea’s an occasional customer at our store. All I know about her is that she lives in Maunaloa with her uncle and aunt. That she’s more than seventy-five percent Native Hawaiian. That she’s unemployed. And that she never buys anything here besides her toxins of choice. I’ve heard whispers about her and batu, but that’s hearsay.
Is this what batu does?
So now I’m staring at her. I cover my mouth with my hand to keep in the ewww sound that wants to escape. La’akea is staring back at my bald head. Neither of us says anything. I’m remembering the first time I saw her a couple of years ago. It was the way she held herself that was unforgettable. She had perfect posture, carrying her strong body the way I imagined an ali’i would’ve back in the day. But it was more than that. Her aura was sublime. It felt like I was in the presence of someone almost divine. But today she looks like she stepped out of a casket that’s been buried for fifty years.
I dump the coins onto the counter and start counting. Sadness whizzes about in my head. Guilt too. It’s not like I’m Captain Cook or Lorrin Thurston. And I haven’t directly stolen La’akea’s land. Or killed her family. Or given her a deadly disease. But here I am maxin at the store, thinking about Mark or when I can write my next rap, and all the while she’s been scrounging for coins to buy substances that’ll probably kill her from the looks of it. She destroys herself by buying things from our store while we make money.
But I didn’t ask to move here. I didn’t ask to work here. Thanks a bunch, Dad.
I’m about halfway through counting the pennies and my mind wanders. I think about what Pono and I were talking about on Friday after Hawaiian history class. About how most people on Moloka’i have an understanding of Native Hawaiian issues that goes beyond the textbooks and classrooms. Pono was born and raised on Moloka’i and his parents are active in the Native Hawaiian sovereignty movement. And since I’ve been to many activist meetings with my dad, I’ve heard the perspectives of Native Hawaiians on the island with regards to land, water, culture, and history. It isn’t all hula girls, tikis, grass shacks, and mai tais. It’s about a people that prior to foreign contact were a highly structured and refined society. It’s about how the Native Hawaiian culture was all but wiped out by the negative impacts of colonialism. The depopulating. The heisting of land and health. The educational, economic, and political powerlessness.
I finish counting the loose change. As usual, La’akea has the exact amount. “Exact to the penny. Thanks,” I say under my breath.
I force myself to look at her. To try to really see her. I peer into her raven eyes. I’m surprised by the hope spilling from her dark brown irises. It seems at odds with the devastation of her body. It demands acknowledgement and drags a half smile from my lips. A little louder I say, “Take care, La’akea.”
She gives me a crooked smile back and says, “Later, Patel.” Then she throws me a raised shaka and heads out of the store.
My brain is about to self-combust with guilt when Omar Ellis steps into the store. He and La’akea give each other a strong chin-up as they pass near the entrance. Omar’s strutting. I’m talking Aerosmith and Run DMC Walk This Way strutting. And like that rock and rap collaboration, Omar is a cultural collaboration. He’s half African American, a quarter Hawaiian, and a quarter Samoan. His hair towers in the most incredibly tight hi-top fade. It’s almost as high as Kid from Kid ‘n Play. Today he’s sporting some baggy jeans slung low. A black t-shirt under a black and white flannel shirt. Both oversized. And a pair of white-on-white Air Force 1’s. His head-to-toe hip hop style is undeniable. Impressed as always, I give him a subtle chin-up.
Like me, Omar’s sixteen. We’re both young seniors. Our birthdays are actually only one day apart. He lives in Maunaloa with his mom and comes to the store all the time. But I didn’t meet him here. I met him at school in ’87. He’s the first person who talked to me. For some reason he took me under his wing. Maybe he felt sorry for me, watching me struggle to understand pidgin initially. He called me “IH,” Indian haole, for weeks. He’s been teasing me ever since.
Omar usually greets me by throwing his arm around my shoulder and asking “Howzit my sistah from anotha mistah?” Omar hasn’t seen his mistah since he was five years old. His dad’s been in prison on the mainland for murder. From what Omar’s told me it was someone else’s drug deal gone bad. And his dad got framed. Rotten naseeb, I guess. Although I think that qualifies as a particularly tragic fate. Totally cruel. I mean his dad never touched drugs or alcohol. Omar likes to talk about how his dad treated his mom. I swear he puffs out his chest whenever he brings it up because he’s super proud of his honorable role model. Omar says that even from prison his dad shows how much he respects his mom. Whether it’s over the phone or in letters, his dad treats his mom like royalty. And his mom is committed to being supportive to his dad throughout the imprisonment.
I’m in awe of his parents. The way they act towards each other is the exact opposite of my parents.
Anyway, I know Omar’s only joking when he says the whole “sistah from anotha mistah” thing. And even though most of our other verbal exchanges also involve him teasing me and me trying to keep up with the repartee, I know he cares. He’s the closest thing to a friend I have.
