Diamond Head (19 page)

It was two rooms really, a small room with a metal table that held my father’s developing instruments, and an even smaller closet, kept dark and cool, where the film was actually processed. My father was putting on blue nylon gloves when I entered, about to go into the darkroom.

“Amy,” he said. And that was all for a minute. He examined his left glove.

“There is something very interesting that has come up, and I feel the need to discuss it with you.” He opened a black canister that sat on the table, one of six that he used daily. I sat down on the spare stool.

“Come with me,” he said, opening the door to the darkroom. I got off my stool and followed. He shut the door behind us and then, sufficiently shrouded in darkness, he began to speak.

“Mrs. Leong called yesterday evening. She was very taken by you, you know, Amy? She liked you very much.”

I listened quietly. I knew this already—I had the dress as proof of her admiration, but it seemed that my father knew more. It seemed that perhaps he knew why. I heard him deposit a roll of film into the canister and pour in a glass of purified water to swell the gelatin. I knew the sounds well. He set the timer.

“I’m going to ask you to do something, and I don’t know how you’ll feel about it, but it’s amazing, Amy. It’s a tremendous thing for you to do.” He inverted the canister and set it back on the table.

“Well, what is it?” I asked, my voice large in the small room.

“It’s not that simple, Amy. It’s a big decision, one that I’m not taking lightly, and—”

“Dad,” I interrupted, my eyes finally adjusting to the dark. “Please just say it.”

“She wants you to be a part of their family,” he said abruptly, his hands still. “She wants you to marry her son.”

“She wants me to marry
Kaipo
?” I asked, more astonished that Kaipo could not find his own wife than by the offer.

My father went silent. The timer went off and he poured the water from the canister, replacing it with a new clear solution. He looked intently into the canister, swirling it around in his hand. His silhouette was thin and delicate in the dark—he looked like a paper cutout. He could not look into my eyes. He set the canister on the small table and let out a deep breath of air.

“Bohai,” he said finally. “She would like you to marry Bohai.”

Now I was silent.
Bohai
, I thought in disbelief, and the sound of his name was jarring, like a sudden, careless swipe of a violin. Bohai had barely spoken two words to me that day, let alone given any impression that he would like to
marry
me. How could it be Bohai? And then I thought of the dress. Of course, I realized, it was so painfully obvious. Mrs. Leong—she had been planning this. This whole time, all the staring, all the curiosity, she had been examining me for her somber, elder son—the son in need of a wife. The dress was a bribe; of course it was. It was a taste of what would come.

“I know he’s shy,” my father continued, “but he’s a good man. And Amy, wouldn’t you like that life for yourself? Think of the opportunity.”

“You can’t be serious,” I said, my voice lowering to a rasp. “You can’t possibly be serious about this, Dad.” My eyes shifted frantically, trying to get my father’s gaze to meet my own but losing him in the dark. The timer began to beep.

“God damn it, of course I’m serious!” My father raised his voice for the first time, slamming the black canister on the table.

Tears came, all at once. They began to fall as I stood, realizing the gravity in my father’s voice. He wanted this. He actually wanted me to marry this sad, lonely stranger.

“What about Henry?” I exclaimed, panic rising in the pitch of my voice. “I’m going to marry Henry!”

“I know you have feelings for Henry!” he interrupted. “I know this, Amy! But do you hear what I’m saying? Are you hearing
me
?”

The tears were still coming. I didn’t know what to say.
Feelings
for Henry? He knew nothing of how I felt for Henry. My mouth filled with terrible thoughts, all the things I could never say; that he’d never known real love, that his marriage to my mother was a pathetic charade. He was a selfish, ignorant man who would always be miserable because he’d settled.

But then I thought of Henry and instead of his voice, instead of his hands, I saw the photograph. I saw myself in the bathroom, on the patio, all around town with that flimsy, worthless photograph that was razing all my memories. My teeth clenched as I summoned his face, his real face, his smile, the low tenor of his laugh, anything attached to flesh, to bone. If I could see something real, just for a moment, I was certain the feeling would return. And I would be right about him and my father would be wrong.

I gripped the table, infuriated, overwhelmed.

“Please, Amy, listen to me.” My father reached for my hand but I retracted it. I glared as his voice trembled. “I may be an old man now,” he said, “but I once had dreams of my own. I wanted to be successful. I wanted to be rich. I wanted to give you children everything you ever wanted. But look at me.” He reached for the film canister, shaking it vigorously, violently, his arm thrashing through the air. Suddenly he released his grip and the container smashed against the wall of the darkroom. I heard the lid break open and felt the spray of the clear liquid exploding against the wall, the metallic smell of chemicals filling the room.

“Do you think I like this?” he demanded, slamming a fist against the table. “Do you? You think I don’t know I’m a failure? My wife despises me, my children don’t respect me—I know this, Amy! I know all of this!”

I brought a hand to my mouth and my tears stopped. I’d never seen my father like this. Not once, not ever.

“I have failed in so many ways.” He paused, his head shaking slowly in the dark. “I was supposed to have a different life, and I fell short. But this could be our saving, Amy, don’t you understand? This
will
change everything. You want children. Do you want to raise them like mine—twelve people in one basement? It’s pathetic,” he spat, dropping his head between his hands, his body shaking as he tried to contain his resentment.

“I want so much more for you, Amy. Go home. Think about it. If you won’t, I will call Mrs. Leong in the morning. But I think you’d be making an enormous mistake.”

Even in his lowest times, my father was a clever man, and he knew exactly what kind of thoughts would arise if I went home to Kaneohe to
think about it
. He wanted me to see the dirt, the leaks, the rust, the cracks, the daily battles that were my alternative. He forced me to consider what my future could realistically hold, coming from a one-room duplex in the country, from a family of twelve in a ramshackle basement.

When I arrived home, my sisters were in the front yard, poking at centipedes with sticks and collecting them in jars, all of them oblivious to the proposal I had just received. I tore past them, ignoring their hellos. I charged through the screen door and heard their voices stop, felt all their eyes following me.

I needed to write to Henry. I needed to tell him what had happened, and the decision I had already come to. I would not marry Bohai—
it was absurd
. It was insulting and arrogant and completely insane. I pulled a piece of paper from a folder under my mattress. I sat on my bed with my pen to the paper, lungs filled with sticky air, poised for my tirade.

Dear Henry
, I began, and immediately I felt my grip on the pen tighten. I exhaled the heavy air and my fingers tightened again, this time so hard that I could feel the metal against my bone. What came next? How did I possibly begin?
Dear Henry, my father would like me to
marry another man. Dear Henry, Lin Leong has approached me to be her daughter. Dear Henry, since you left I’ve become acquainted with the Leongs and their oldest son has proposed marriage.

The thought alone was enough to induce panic. As I considered my words, it felt like they were being thrown into an abyss, disappearing as soon as I thought them. The paper taunted me with its emptiness, its flimsiness, its ability to simply get lost along the route and never arrive at its destination. With words like these, how could I trust a letter? How could I explain that my father had begged me—that for the first time in my life, I had watched him cry? And perhaps even more difficult, even more convoluted, that his tears had affected me somehow. I felt the weight of my entire family, all eleven of their miserable faces wondering
why, if I had the capacity to save our family, would I dismiss it so easily? Did eleven lives not outweigh one?

Not to my father, I thought to myself. Not until now.

I began to mark the page. I pressed my pen deep into the blank paper and drew long, violent scratches that reached into the next page. I drew them faster and faster until I was furiously making lines, ripping the paper and getting ink on my thighs. And then I began to cry—disobedient, uncontrollable tears, ripping the paper in a dozen pieces, crushing the pieces between my fists and throwing them to the floor.

As my mind began to boil, as my thoughts continued to deepen and tangle, I heard the screen door open. I heard my sisters’ voices, one after the other, as they entered the house. From my bed I watched the white sheet; I closed my fists around the last bits of paper and watched them march through. Denise held the jar of centipedes—dozens of them, crawling on top of one another.

They looked at me, sitting in a pile of torn paper, my knees marked with ink, my breath short from crying.

“What’s wrong with you?” Denise asked as she tapped her finger against the outside of her jar.

“Yeah, what’s wrong with you?” Like an echo, I heard it three more times. My vision began to blur.

“Can I just be alone?” I begged, trying so hard to control the pitch of my voice but immediately giving away my desperation. “
Please
. Can you just give me a minute?”

“Fine, fine,” someone said, “but I need to check under your bed. I think that’s where the magnifying glass is.”

I sat quietly, stupidly; I willed myself to be patient. I waited for my sisters to clear out of my room—a room that was rightfully all of ours—when I heard my brothers come in through the back door. I heard them opening cabinets in the kitchen on the opposite side of the wall. I tightened my fists and felt my fingernails dig into the skin of my palm.

“We need water and all the cups are dirty.” My brother Richard lifted the dividing sheet and walked through. “What’s wrong with you?” He looked briefly at me and then at Denise, who was still holding the jar. “Ohhh, centipedes.” He grabbed the jar and overturned it, releasing the insects onto the bedroom floor. He laughed, running in place so that the centipedes scattered under the beds and into the piles of dirty laundry and along the cracked baseboards and throughout the house. My sisters shrieked and jumped on the beds. The louder they screamed, the faster the insects moved.

I was the only one in the room who stayed still. I sat there silently. My tears had stopped. Five girls jumped on the beds around me, screaming as my brother taunted them.
This is my life
, I thought, blocking out the sounds around me.
This is it.

It occurred to me that I was one of the centipedes, tumbling in the jar with the rest of the insects. All of them were ordinary; all of them were destined for the same miserable fate. What made me any different? Among creatures from the same place, raised in dirt, packed together in a single room, what determined an extraordinary fate? Was there such a thing for us?

Henry was not insignificant. Henry knew how to fish, he knew how to move electricity, knew how to drive, how to cook, how to love without fear, how to give just to give, without expectation or motive or agenda.

But did these things add up to an extraordinary fate? Or would we live off kindness and laughter, raising our children on hand-me-downs and vegetables from our meager victory garden? And me? I could clean houses. I could stay home and raise our children. I could wash our sheets, worry about our bills. And when my daughter got old enough, I could show her my high school diploma—my highest honor, my greatest achievement. I could tell her that it’s difficult to change, that not all of us are destined for something great; that it’s okay to be a centipede.

Silently I stood. I lifted the sheet and left the room. Bohai at least had a chance. I wasn’t that stupid, wasn’t so foolish to think that money didn’t make a difference.

I opened the back door and found my mother on the patio. She lowered her cigarette.

“I need one of those,” I said, pointing to the pack on the table, a sudden urge for something I’d never taken to.

“Tough day,” my mother said, more as a statement than a question, handing me one.

“So you know.” I lit the end and took a long pull.

“He told me last night.”

I held the smoke deep in my lungs. I let it travel through my blood, up to my head, releasing it when it began to burn.

“What do I do?”
I exhaled. It came out as desperately as I felt.

“I don’t know.” She shook her head. “It’s not a situation I’ve seen before. Your father loves you. He wants something different for you.” She paused.

“Amy,” she said, blowing out a long trail of smoke, letting it linger in the air before swatting it away, “I’m not saying that what your father and I have is bad, because it’s not. We care for each other. But sometimes you go your whole life not knowing what you could have been—
who
you could have been, if you chose something else.”

My mother looked down at her naked ring finger. It was always
something that made her self-conscious; it was something she spoke of only in times of true distress. She looked so vulnerable, so fragile and exposed as she spoke. She had thought about the situation all night, she said. She had not slept. When my father told her about the offer, she was overcome with a flood of conflicting emotions.

“I thought he was joking,” she said. “I couldn’t believe it was real—this chance to become instantly wealthy, instantly a
Leong
. And then, Amy, I thought about you. I removed you from the fantasy and thought about what this all really means.”