House of Many Gods (49 page)

The media followed, and the eyes of the outside world slowly turned its gaze upon Mākua. Under mounting pressure, a federal judge decreed that, for the duration of the studies—a process that would take years—
the Army cease its bombing of Mākua Valley and its beaches. On that day folks stood along the highway, cheering.

“But even so,” Lopaka said, “our beach waters are lifeless. No fish do you see here, and very little
limu
. Dolphins and whales long ago left these waters. It will take decades to bring them back. And for the valley, we must never turn our backs. We must be
kahu o ka ‘āina
. Guardians of the land.”

That island-autumn was a slowed-down time when silence walked the coast. The burned and ravaged land stopped crying out. Some nights in brindled moonlight, sounds issued from the valleys and mountains of Mākua. The sound of humming, the
‘āina
humming to Herself. A healing sound. Folks looked up and
they
began to hum, but then they shook themselves clear-sighted, knowing victory was illusory, that truths merged into untruths. And so they left a kind of innocence behind. Henceforth, they would always be vigilant and wary.

L
IFE PLODDED ON DEEP IN THE VALLEYS; GRAFFITIED
Q
UONSET
huts still warned of gangster turf. There were still shootings, dead bodies found. But there were more police sweeps now, and parents paid more attention. On weekends people rallied at the false
kamani
tree at Mākua Beach. It was open once again for spiritual gatherings and cleansings, for swimming and gathering
pōhaku
, and the cleaning out of weeds and refuse to help reopen streambeds.

Each day Gena and Lopaka sat in the sea up to their waists. And she felt her womb respond, felt the sea’s healing minerals strengthen her vessels and her organs. One day they would hold her husband’s seed. Now she watched waves wash his bad leg side to side, like a shell lulled on the ocean floor.

“You been depending on that brace too long. Time you start walking without that thing. Become the man you are in bed.”

His eyes momentarily turned to slits, ready for a fight. Gena threw back her head and laughed, her lovely breasts bobbing in the water.

“Don’t give me the
stink
-eye!”

Lopaka smiled. He felt his leg bones humming, the warm sea softening his scars. He reached out and grabbed her hand, their locked fingers dancing in the broth of waves.

———

U
P ON
K
EOLA
R
OAD, IN FRONT OF THE
M
AKIKI HOUSE TWO
H
AWAIIAN
flags flew. Inez had finally given birth to twins. Panama Chang still fought with his Italian wife, arguing for more rice nights. And old Uncle Noah still leaned at his window, the windowsill grown shiny through the decades of his forearms.

At night their shipwreck of a house seemed to palpitate, made tremulous by the flickering blue tube of a TV in front of which old Ben slept, and by candles lit in various rooms. Niki liked reading by candlelight, it took him back to student days in Russia. Adoring young cousins mimicked him, doing their homework by candlelight. Sometimes Aunty Pua tottered over, slipped a linty, dried plum from her pocket and pressed it to his lips. He slid his arm around her waist.

“How is my little
babushka?
”

“Oh you!” she cried. “Put your eyes back in that book. By and by, you going be one excellent teacher, when you
pau
making your important film.”

She still read the Bible every night, though she would never reach the end. Old Uncle Tito had begun using the thin pages of her Bible for rolling his tobacco. She was reading Chronicles, he was smoking Deuteronomy.

Autumn turned to island-winter, making the ocean rage. White waves stood erect like giant hares. Some days there was only fog, so thick the world outside their windows disappeared. At night they lay staring at the ceiling from which termite dust filtered down, feathering small hairs on the ridges of their ears, and on their cheeks. They watched it sift through candlelight.

“After our child comes,” Niki said, “I will resuscitate the house, one room at a time. I am good carpenter, you know. It is your house, and you must honor it.”

“Now it’s your house, too,” she said.

“I will have to first consult the house. See if it accepts me.”

Ana saw how carefully he moved. How softly he talked. Even when he brought her a glass of water he walked bent over like a child, careful not to spill a drop. As if he were on probation. As if, if he did not measure up, they would send him back. The years would unbend him. She knew one day he would shout again, stomp around like a Cossack, perform his crazy Russian dances. But this was his quiet time, of coming back to life.

Some nights he jumped up and looked around.

“It’s all right, Niki. You dozed off.”

“Oh, Ana. How good it is to lie still, listening to weather, and know it cannot kill me. That I am growing strong again. And how very good to lay my head against your belly, hearing our child’s beating heart.”

The baby kicked, which made her right hip throb. Her body was bloated now, her slender wrists looked wrong. The child felt huge, long overdue. For months Rosie had taken her to the ocean for
‘au‘au kai
, her sea bath, letting waves sway her belly back and forth to loosen the child so it would not stick during birth. Now storms prevented sea baths, and she missed the sensation of weightlessness, of all her organs floating.

“My clinic is going to have home births and water births, like in your country. I don’t understand why I can’t do that now.”

Niki implored her, “Ana. This one time I ask you, please. Be prudent. Have our firstborn in hospital with real doctor. We do not know what to expect. With my warped genes, we could be starting brand-new species.”

She almost laughed, but flames reached out, her insides seemed to crackle. Then sudden stillness. A capricious child. It had been in the “White Nights” of Russia that her body visibly began to change. A line began to grow upward from the bottom of her abdomen; another started down from the top. Her
alawela
, scorched path. Now Ana looked in a mirror, at where the dark lines had almost met.

“It’s time for
kuakoko
, bloody back.”

Niki looked alarmed.

“…  Childbirth.”

“Cannot be! Two more months yet.”

“No one is listening to me,” she said. “This child wants to be
born
.”

“Too soon,” he said. “Too soon.”

And yet the family was already in preparation. A pig had been fattened for the birth feast. Old aunties sat around calling on the
‘aumākua
, family gods, imploring them to come to her in dreams and give her child a name. Without this, they could not compose her name chants. One night in her sleep, the gods did come, decreeing the
inoa p?
, the name given in darkness. Ana would not tell them what it was.

And as her body swelled, old
tūtū
women
lomilomied
her body, massaging especially the stretched skin of her belly. They gently manipulated the baby, making sure she was in the right position.

“Lift up your arm.”

Automatically, her left arm rose.

“A girl! For real.”

They studied her right breast where the nipple stood out brown and firm.

“Ah!
Maka pua‘a
. Pig nipple. Means baby will nurse good.”

And, they made her observe all the
kapus
. No scaling of fish, or the baby would have rotten breath. No eating mountain apples, or she would be stained with red birthmarks. No eating of bitter or too-salty foods, or she would be born with everlasting thirst.

Ana rebelled and bowed to her craving for
kimchee
, for Hawaiian salt and seaweed. Week after week, she gorged herself.

“Auwē!”
old aunties cried. “The child will have the face of a crab.”

“Rosie, you don’t believe this nonsense, do you?”

Her cousin shrugged. “I told you before.
Pēlā paha. ‘A‘ole paha
. Maybe. Maybe not. But it is better to believe.”

T
IME MOVED FUNEREALLY SLOW
. N
OW SHE COULD HARDLY WALK
. Some nights she woke fighting for breath, as if the child were trying to smother her from the inside. Small things began disturbing her. A cousin’s haircut. Tommy’s whistling was off-key. Rosie’s hand on her shoulder did not feel sincere.

One day when she woke her body was numb. It lay there like a log, not getting the message from her brain. The message was fear. The child would be born missing an arm, a leg. Or, she would be too perfect, Ana would love her too much. She would shoot out of the womb like a bullet and keep going, out into the world. And she would take Niki with her. He would forsake Ana for their child. She would be alone again.

She grabbed his hand as he laid a damp cloth across her chest.

“I don’t want this child! I just want us. To shout when we’re angry, make love when we feel like it, eat when we want. There’s a whole life I haven’t lived. I want to live it now, with you.”

He saw she was panicking. “Ana. Nothing will change. Only what you want. But now you must talk baby still. She is too early.”

“I don’t want to talk to her. I don’t want to have her. I want to change my mind.”

Rosie laid a calm hand on her forehead. “You are panicking. And why? It’s not the pain. It’s not the weight. For the first time in your life, you’re not in control. You’re feeling helpless.”

Ana lay back against her pillow, panting.

“It was the same with me,” Rosie said. “At first I hated pregnancy. Makali‘i’s father planted his seed, doubled my size, then deserted me
without giving her a name. I felt trapped, imprisoned. I thought of suicide.”

“How did you overcome it?”

“Pua. She has always been the wise one, though we made fun of her. One night she came when I was trying to throw out the child. She put my left hand on her Bible, my right hand on the KUMULIPO. And she said ‘Pray.’ I said ‘Who should I pray to?’ And Pua said, ‘That is your decision. You see,
you still have control.’
It was like a thunderclap. My body was bloated and useless, but I could make decisions. I still had that power. So do
you
.”

“This is a rich time for a woman,” Rosie said. “So rich our emotions get confused. Much fear, much guilt. Giving birth is such a sacrament sometimes we think we don’t deserve it. It’s the only time we transcend the merely human.”

Ana shook her head. “I don’t want to transcend. I want my life back! My ankles.”

“Stop being childish. Embrace these days. And be prepared for what comes next … 
‘Īloli
. That blizzard of emotions that comes in late pregnancy. The blues. Then downright grief. This is a time for flushing all things out.”

A
S
R
OSIE SAID IT WOULD, IT CAME
. I
N WAVES LIKE MULTIPLE AS
saults. Every source of pain she had denied, perversely turned away from. The grandmother who never deigned to know her. The grandfather she only came to know so late. Her mother, who had not wanted her, had turned her back on her. She mourned that proud and lonely child.

She thought of the plumber, Sam, a man of grace and laughter, whom cancer took while it spared her. She remembered him squaring his shoulders, accepting that he was dying. She should have held him, said she loved him, that he would beat the cancer. What would it have cost to lie? She had deprived him of the dignity of hope.

She thought of Niki, all he had suffered. Parents sacrificed. His young wife, melting into snow. Things he would try to put behind him that would haunt him all his life. She thought how she had let him go, had almost lost him, and how she did not deserve him now, did not deserve his child. She held her stomach and grievously wept.

“
Bedney
Ana!” Niki cried. “You are experiencing immense physical changes. Your brain, and glands, the metabolic system … all … 
yam-burg
and
skolzko!
”

And each night, silent as a ray, Makali‘i came, easing into a place between Ana’s shoulder blades. The niece she had ignored until it was too late. For weeks, she was Ana’s nightly execution.

Then came the memory of her surgery, of waking in the Recovery Room, a doctor peering down. Then twilight, Rosie dozing in a chair. It struck her now how beautiful it was to come back from the dead and see someone sitting in attendance. To know another human cared.

What Ana grieved for now was not her breast. What she mourned was her abject aloneness all those months and years that followed. Nights when she sat like an old woman on her bed, turning the pages of a calendar. Nights she had wrapped her arms around herself for comfort.

How could a human survive like that?
Like a plant without rain, trying to water itself. Then she remembered that there
had
been someone there with her through months of chemotherapy and radiation. The mother who had come back into her life so late. But, she had come.