Diamond Head (24 page)

At five o’clock, when the guests were full and the sun began to lower, Frank and I unveiled our final surprise, setting off ten thousand fireworks on Waikiki Beach. Traditionally, the fireworks are lit
at the beginning of the wedding, but I wanted to wait until the end—to symbolize the excitement of a new life about to begin. The beach was dotted with uniformed men, all obeying orders, a few upset about the illegal extravagance—but every one of them looked up to the sky, mesmerized by the neon explosions that rained down on the ocean, against Diamond Head’s towering silhouette. Frank and Mr. Chan stood by the water, the slacks of their tuxedos rolled up to their knees, a flask of whiskey passing between them as they tilted their heads upward. Amy clutched Bohai’s hand, their bare feet tucked deep into the warm sand, watching beams of fuchsia and scarlet light up the evening sky. And when Bohai’s hand slipped from Amy’s wrist to her waist, her arms wrapping around his neck and sliding down his chest, they quickly excused themselves over the sound of crackling fireworks and ran barefoot along the beach, toward the honeymoon suite that awaited them.

November 1964

H
ONOLULU
, H
AWAII

Hong is the only one who hears Mrs. Leong.

It takes her just a moment, a single flash of contemplation, to match her old friend’s words to a memory. And as Hong places it, slips the words into their slot in time, she understands precisely where Mrs. Leong’s thoughts have fled.

Hong wants to smile but she doesn’t. She doesn’t want to be caught, doesn’t care to explain its source; but on the underside of Hong’s skin, in among the blood that still pumps through her body, she feels a gratitude, liquid and ethereal, that Mrs. Leong’s mind has settled on that evening, that a happy memory has won out in the trenches of her old friend’s mind.

Let her stay there, Hong decides. Let her feel the joy of her son, the thrill of his wedding.

“Sorry?” the priest says, leaning in closer. “Sorry—what was that?”

Mrs. Leong doesn’t respond. She continues to look at the priest but her eyes move through him. Even across the haze of the smoke, the priest can tell that her focus is far beyond his face. So he turns to Hong, and with the darks of his eyes and the hesitation on his lips, he asks her what to do next.

“It’s too much,” Hong says, quietly enough so only he can hear. “Better to let her be—finish the rites. She’s tired already.”

“Of course,” the priest replies, his brow slanting inward, creating a look of absolute understanding. “Yes, go ahead. I’ll finish here.”

Hong nods once and closes her wooden box. She tucks it under
her left arm and places her right hand on the small of Mrs. Leong’s back, guiding her away from the altar.

“Save your strength,” Hong whispers, although she knows Mrs. Leong isn’t listening. “Plenty of day still left.” She hears her own words, her attempts at reassurance. She feels them travel from her lips to her ears and wonders if all along, she was speaking to herself.

Together, they walk from the great room to the kitchen. From there Hong can hear the priest’s voice, beginning to chant anew to the rhythm of his gong. In her mind she can see the white-gloved pallbearers approaching the altar, lifting Bohai from the corners of his casket, walking him through the lingering incense, down the aisle, out the front door.

In the kitchen, Hong fills the kettle with water from the sink and places it on a front burner. She lights the flame below it. Before it boils, as steam sputters softly from its short silver mouth, Hong removes the pot and pours two cups of tea. She stirs one, patiently counting to thirty before allowing the leaves to settle. She blows gently on its liquid surface and hands it to Mrs. Leong, who stands by the kitchen door, looking out its small window.

It’s a side door, opening to a pathway; the pathway leads to the garage. There’s not much to see, some grass and cement, a thin bush of pink hibiscus. She’s pulled the white curtain back from the window and simply stares, holding the porcelain cup with the tips of her fingers.

Hong returns to the stove, holding her open palm above the burner she’s just used. She touches her index finger to a coil and thinks. With her right hand, Hong reaches for a baking dish in the cabinet and places it upside down on the burner. She places the kettle in the sink and runs cold water over the top.

“One minute,” she tells Mrs. Leong, “I’ll come right back.” But Mrs. Leong doesn’t move. She doesn’t shift her gaze from the window.

Carefully, Hong wraps her hand around the doorknob at Mrs. Leong’s waist and with two fingers, without a sound, she turns the
lock. She tries the knob, just slightly to feel it resist, and exits the way they came in.

Back in the great room, guests have begun their exit. Kaipo stands at the front door, shaking hands and offering a shoulder for them to pat, to squeeze, to rub encouragingly on their way out. Already, he looks rumpled, like a child’s favorite toy, passed among friends, ragged from overuse. Intuitively, Hong’s feet start toward him, but before she can reach the door, Amy appears with Theresa at her side.

“What happened?” Amy asks. “I’m so sorry,” she says, “you knew all along. She shouldn’t have come.”

“It’s okay,” Hong replies, not revealing what she knows. “She’s with tea in the kitchen. She’s okay.”

“She was supposed to come with us. Should she still come with us?”

“I think it’s best that you take her from the kitchen. Use the side door. And I will do the salt water.” Hong nods once and turns, disappearing down the main corridor.

“Theresa,” Amy says. “Go—tell the driver to pull into the side of the house. I’ll get Mrs. Leong and wait for you there.”

“Alone?” Theresa responds, her mouth suspended around the word. “Mom, don’t make me walk through all of them. Please. You know how they look at me!”

“Theresa,” Amy says firmly.

“Let me stay with her.”

“What?”

“I’ll stay with her and you can get the car,” she pleads, breathless. “Come on, Mom, please. I don’t know if he’s here. I haven’t seen him yet and if he is, I don’t want to run into him right now. Alone.”

Amy lifts a hand to her temples and kneads with her fingers, pushing them deep into the parallel grooves.

“Fine,” she says, without looking at her daughter. “Go, then. Quick, before I change my mind.” She waves her from the room but Theresa is already on her way.

Amy slips through the front door without much trouble. Keeping her head down and walking at a brisk pace, she deflects the stares that follow her. She moves too quickly to be stopped for small talk; she walks with enough purpose to be left alone. Twice, on her way across the garden, Amy looks up and scans the groups of gatherers. She searches for a young man among the middle-aged skin and dark suits of her husband’s mourners, but she doesn’t see him. At her daughter’s prompting, Amy realizes that she hasn’t seen him at all that morning. She looks a third time and knows that the last place she’ll find him is in the garden, chatting among friends, because he doesn’t know a single person there.

The iron gate is open, ready for the procession. Amy walks through its massive width and sees the town car, idling in the shade at the end of the street. Before she can signal, an arm extends from the driver’s window and a palm opens. Immediately, the car moves toward her, slowing to a stop in front of the gate. The driver exits the car to open Amy’s door but she’s already opened it herself. She’s already gotten in, already lowered herself into the leather seat and released the air she’s been holding in her lungs.

Inside, Amy asks the driver to pull into the entrance and to the side of the house.

“Right there,” she says, pointing past the garden to a small area to the right of the garage. In the cemented space, Theresa waits with Mrs. Leong, who holds a teacup in her hand.

As the car stops, the women approach and the driver bolts from his seat to open the door before they can. Theresa slides in first, to the middle seat, followed by Mrs. Leong, who steadies herself with the driver’s hand, entering the backseat with her second hand extended, teacup first.

“Did you see him?” Theresa asks.

Her mother shakes her head.

“I knew he wouldn’t come,” Theresa mumbles, raising her eyes to the ceiling of the car.
Bastard
, she whispers.

From behind the windshield, the driver can see that it’s almost time to start the procession. An old woman, her hair entirely white, enters the garden from the house, clutching a shallow silver bowl with one arm. She ushers the guests forward, past the garden and through the gates, all the while dipping her fingers into the bowl and flicking water around her, sprinkling it in their wake. It’s salt water in that bowl; the driver knows this from the hundreds of Chinese funerals he has witnessed from his car. Salt purifies the space; it drives the spirits from the home. When the family returns, they will repeat the process. They will dip their hands in salt water, purifying them, giving them a clean start after death.

As the driver watches the white-haired woman, her trail of water widens; she rotates methodically from side to side, throwing the liquid in beads, extending her arm as if feeding chickens, advancing all the while. The driver stares, caught in something of a trance, hanging on her every movement like a siren’s song, like a magician’s final act.

Then, suddenly, the woman turns and looks directly at him, as if expecting him to be there, and waves him behind the hearse. The driver flinches, pulled from his strange thoughts. The woman looks through the windshield; her head and her arm move together in large swooping movements, which continue until the driver has pulled up behind the funeral car. The white-haired woman, still clutching her silver bowl, climbs into the backseat of the hearse and a moment later the car starts forward. They begin their steady crawl through the gate.

On the street, the mourners wait with fistfuls of paper money. As the driver passes them, they throw the squares of paper high into the air so that it rains gold and white, flitting left and right across the windows of the car. The confetti catches in the branches of the cherry blossoms, glinting beside the blushing petals. The driver keeps his foot on the brake, nervous with so many important bodies surrounding him, dozens of cars lining the road, and leans forward in his seat, wrapping ten fingers around the wheel as he maneuvers slowly through the crowd.

At the end of the street, they come to a stop sign. The driver opens his fists and feels the blood return. He shakes out his fingers and realigns them on the wheel. He breathes.

It’s nearly noon and the sun sits directly above. The driver turns the dial on his air-conditioning and a cool, steady gust pushes through the vents. He lets it dry the sweat on his skin before adjusting the vents and sending the air behind him.

They leave Diamond Head and enter the valley, driving north to Manoa, when the driver senses something moving behind him. He looks in his rearview mirror and sees the oldest woman, sitting behind him, shifting her body from the front of her seat to the back, sliding anxiously about in the small space. Her face looks out the window; her fingers tap the frame. Nothing unusual, the driver thinks, and returns his gaze to the road.

“Lin,” Amy Leong says, and the driver’s eyes dart back up to his mirror. He looks again at the old woman’s face but can only see her profile, slumped and agitated. “We’re on our way to the cemetery. We’re going to bury Bohai.”

Amy Leong extends her hand across her daughter’s lap to steady the woman and the driver nearly chokes.
It’s Mrs. Leong
, he realizes.
Lin Leong
, back from wherever they’ve been hiding her. Every year, every spring, the public schools in Kaneohe paid tribute to her work with a fund-raiser in her name. They sent an invitation to the Diamond Head house, addressed to Lin, but every year Kaipo came instead, apologizing for his mother’s absence, offering a check and no excuses, no specifics. The driver was told explicitly, on multiple occasions, that the Leong mother would not be attending the funeral. So when he saw the old woman, standing by the side of the house with Amy’s daughter, he assumed that she was someone else. For twenty years, Lin Leong had not been seen in public.

The driver alternates his focus between his mirror and the road. Amy Leong leans across the middle seat, over her daughter’s belly, and holds her mother-in-law’s shoulder, trying to steady her. Lin
Leong has yet to respond, but her breathing has deepened; her chest heaves, rising and falling noticeably with each long, troubled breath.

“Should we stop?” Amy’s daughter asks.

“I don’t know,” her mother says rapidly, shaking her head. “Lin,” she says like a command, then again with more urgency. Both of her hands are on the old woman now, one on her shoulder, one on her knee, but Lin Leong continues to shift, back and forth in her seat, her eyes never leaving the window.

It’s curious the way the woman moves, as if she’s anticipating something terrible, unable to sit still with the sheer thought of what’s looming. Certainly a funeral brings disquiet but there’s something else, the driver thinks, his own heart beginning to quicken.

Ahead, they come to a stop light. They’re on University Avenue, minutes from the cemetery. Any farther, the driver thinks, and he would pull over. He sees that the woman needs air. But they’re so close. They’re nearly there and where would he stop? The neighborhood is residential now, white plantation houses, wooden telephone poles, brick walls and private driveways—not a parking lot in sight. He reaches his hand to the air conditioner and turns it up once again. He steps on the gas and closes the gap between his car and the hearse ahead.

Behind him, the sharp clatter of something breaking. A low rattle of its pieces shaking against each other.

“Shit—Mom!” the daughter shouts.

The driver pushes himself up in his seat, digging his left heel into the floor so he can see lower into his mirror. Lin Leong’s hand is closed into a fist; blood drips down her wrist.
Jesus
, Amy says, as she gathers the shards of white and blue porcelain that have fallen around her.

“Sir!” she calls to the driver. “Do you have anything I can use? A napkin—anything?”

Lin Leong’s lap is stained with tea and specked with blood, but still she looks out the window. If anything her face is closer now,
almost touching the glass. The driver has a hard time looking away; it takes him a moment to register Amy’s words.

“Sir!” she calls again.

He shakes his eyes from the mirror and reaches to his passenger side. He opens the glove compartment and sees the three identical handkerchiefs, sitting limply next to his manual. For a moment, he hesitates, dumbstruck by the sight of them. In all his planning, all his predictions, never did he conjure a situation even vaguely like the one he’s in.
Holy shit
, he whispers, grabbing the thin stack.

“Is she okay?” he dares to ask, passing the handkerchiefs to Amy, but no one answers. She presses two cotton squares into the old woman’s palm.

They’re so close. Ahead, the road forks and to the left and at the end of the street lies the entrance to the cemetery.