This Is Paradise (7 page)

“Your woman.”

His hand slipped beneath the elastic of my panties and tugged them to my knees. He was hard against my thigh. “Are you a rooster or a poi dog?”

“Poi dog,” I whispered.

“Good girl,” he said and entered me.

At the end of the spring, as the Indian’s first poetry class drew to a close, he came to me in the yard. “Our crew won the hotel bid in Wailea.”

“Das good,” I said absently. I was trying to teach Hapa how to circle on command, as Makana had once done. Hapa was at the point where he recognized the whistle but didn’t make full turns yet. “You won’t have to leave for work so early in the morning.”

“Maybe you and I can spend a little more time in bed then.” He reached around me and rested his hands on my breasts.

I looked up from Hapa and laughed. “Can. Remember, but, you are my alarm clock. You tell me when it’s time to wake the boys.” I kissed the Indian on the ear and then stepped out of his embrace. I leaned over Hapa again and gave a low whistle. When he paused halfway through the circle, I patted the underside of his tail feathers and he completed the turn. “Ho, see that? He’s going to be ready for the fall derbies.” I rewarded Hapa with a handful of feed and a soft coo.

“The derbies …” The Indian’s voice trailed off. “Are you going to spend this fall fighting again? I thought maybe now that we’re living together …”

“I’m not going to fight every weekend. Just a couple big ones.”

“I never saw you last fall.” The Indian folded his arms across his chest. “I don’t want you fighting those birds anymore.”

“I don’t see what you think is wrong with entering a couple derbies.” I picked up Hapa. The day’s lesson was over.

“I don’t like the violence.”

I stroked Hapa’s hackle, which calmed him before bed like a glass of warm milk does a child. “You watch boxing and MMA. That’s violent.”

The Indian rested his hands on the crown of his head, a habit he had developed when he was frustrated with a poem. “It’s not the same. And anyway, I don’t trust the men.”

“Those men are uncles. They’re always looking out for me.” I nuzzled Hapa and then settled him in his coop. Beyond the cages the valley was gold in the evening light.

The Indian frowned, and the silence between us stretched long and thin. He was the kind of man comfortable with stillness, and just when you began to think he forgot you were beside him, he’d speak. “You don’t act like a lady when you’re at the fights.”

I laughed at him. I couldn’t help it. “When do I ever act like a lady? I always been a tita and always will be. If you like be with a lady, then go find one māhū.”

He rolled his fingers into his palms and squeezed. “I don’t like the fights is all,” he repeated. “I don’t like what your dad was.”

“What does that mean?”

“I hear things, you know.”

“What kine things?”

“It doesn’t matter. What matters is I don’t like what the fighting does to people. Especially you.”

“What does it do to me?” My voice rose.

“It makes you something you’re not. Something hard and mean and vengeful.”

“Maybe that’s exactly what I am.”

“No.” He shook his head, his anger choking him.

“You’re not. You can’t be.” He turned away from me then and stalked back to the house.

I stayed outside with my birds until the sun sank completely into the ocean. The valley below turned purple in
the reflected light, and above me Haleakalā became nothing more than a black shadow against a black sky. I wanted to please the Indian, wanted to be the woman he thought I should be, but the roosters were my dad. They were my way of doing right by him, and they were me.

For the next week, as soon as the Indian returned home from work, he took to the rolling hills beyond our yard. He’d walk for hours across the rocky fields, disappearing into the tall, green grass like a fish diving into deep water. For seven nights I ate alone when evening came and slept alone, too. He camped out on the couch in the living room, and silence reigned in our house. I didn’t rush him to speak nor did I ask for forgiveness. Instead, I continued with my routine, with the birds, with my studies and my plans for beating Mr. Oh. Then, on the eighth morning, I awoke, and the Indian had fastened a poem to the bathroom mirror:

I didn’t know what the poem meant, but I didn’t ask him for answers. I simply tucked his note away in my underwear drawer, where I kept other scraps of his artistry, and found myself thinking about autumn in May.

That night, the Indian waited for me in bed. I took my time undressing in the corner of the bedroom. I pulled
off my socks, brown with mud from hosing down the hen house, and dumped them in the laundry hamper along with my jeans. “Hey, Poi Dog,” the Indian said, like he was getting my attention. I knew what he wanted. He was asking me to slow down, take my time, take his time.

I turned my back to him and slid my tank top over my head, letting him watch my shoulder blades sharpen and retreat. I allowed him to glimpse my bare neck before I untied my hair and let it fall, dusty and tangled, across my back. I slipped my arms out of my bra straps, let the bra fall to the floor softly, like sand falling on sand.

“Come here,” he whispered. I didn’t want him to say he was sorry or that he missed me or that he forgave me. I didn’t want him to say anything. I walked toward him, my arms crossed over my breasts, stopping just short of the bed and refusing to move. Finally, he reached up his hands and pulled me on top of him.

A week later news came that Mr. Oh would be competing in the big derby in Makawao on the second weekend of September. I told Uncle Lee I would enter, and I told him to make sure Mr. Oh knew. I didn’t tell the Indian anything about any of it.

The Indian and I didn’t talk about my birds, and I trained them only when he wasn’t home. Still, their presence hovered between us. He stopped eating eggs, a small protest I was forced to accept, and began spending more evenings
out of the house, playing poker with his friends, sometimes drinking.

A part of me wanted to stop with the birds. As June came to a close and the vog settled heavy in the valley, I began telling myself I could walk away. That I wanted the Indian more than I wanted revenge.

The night was one where the air is fixed, and the summer heat covers you heavy as the ocean until all you recognize in the world is the smell of your own sweat. I fell asleep early, the Indian next to me, both of us so exhausted we felt drugged. At around two in the morning I started suddenly and sat up in bed. The Indian was sleeping, his back to me, the sheets covering nothing but his ankles.

The house was still, but somewhere beyond the silence, beyond the sensation of being alone in a world thick with moisture, I heard noise. The sound was sharp and hollow, like an ax on metal, and it was followed by a muffled shuffling. I thought immediately of my birds. “Indian,” I said, nudging him roughly. “Something’s in the yard.” I didn’t wait for him to answer, but jumped from bed and quickly dressed. I grabbed the Indian’s old revolver from his sock drawer and a handful of bullets. He was still fumbling for his boardshorts when I made my way downstairs.

Inside the kitchen, the glowing electronics and metal appliances made everything seem like an underwater world. Our windows were open attempting to catch a breeze, and I paused to listen. A soft grumbling could be heard coming from the roosters’ yard. I opened the kitchen
door and snuck outside. Beneath my bare feet, the dirt was thick and moist. I started jogging toward the cages. The back gate was askew, and the cage doors were pushed aside. The teepees had been overturned in the yard, and Kū was bloodied and squawking near the side fence. In the back of the yard, a pack of three pit bulls were attacking something, and I knew without looking what it was. I screamed and waved my arms at the dogs, but they kept tearing at their prey. My hands were shaking. Still, I managed to load the gun, and then I did as the Indian had taught me that winter: I raised my arms straight in front of my chest and squared my stance. I pulled back the hammer. I took a deep breath, and I aimed.

The shot was lost in the darkness, but the sound startled the dogs and they looked up from the bundle of feathers in front of them. I pulled back the hammer again and fired, this time hitting one of the dogs in the side. The other two scattered like flies. I shot a third time into the space they had vacated, but the one dog was already down and the other two were running for the back gate. They tore up the hill to the road and disappeared. They were well-trained fighters. I didn’t shoot again.

I walked up to the injured dog. Hapa lay beside the pit, dead, his feathers scattered across the yard and glued to the pit’s mouth in a red, sticky mess. The dog was crying and growling at once. The bullet had gone into its chest, and though it tried to crawl away from me, it wasn’t strong enough to stand and run. I stood over it helplessly. I was
crying, I realized, and shaking, and I felt sorry for the dog and its mission.

No matter what the dog’s owner had asked of it, however, I was the one who had shot it. I felt terrible, sorry for the animal and sorry for me. The dog gnashed its teeth at me and let out a long, lonely cry of pain. Its blood was pooling in the dirt. The Indian came up behind me. He reached for my right hand, which still held the gun, and took it from me. With the expertise of a trained hunter, he pulled back the hammer, aimed at the pit’s head, and fired. The dog went limp. At last the night was silent again.

The Indian rested the gun on Hapa’s cage. Keoni was still in his coop, but he was mad and pecking and I had a hard time locking him in without getting scratched. Kū had a crushed wing, probably injured when one of the teepees fell over. Lono had run toward the hen house. He calmed when I spoke to him and allowed me to carry him back to the yard. Of all of us, Lono seemed the least disturbed by the night’s events.

While I washed Kū and bandaged his wing, the Indian righted the teepees and raked the yard clean. I placed Hapa gently into a trashbag, along with his feathers, and the Indian promised to drive the bag down to the city dump in the morning. We double-bagged the dead dog. He would go to the dump, too.

I checked on the hen house, and the chickens were unharmed. The Indian found a new set of locks and secured
the back and front gates to the roosters’ yard. The others had been cut and tossed on the ground.

Inside the house, I showered and let the hot water run on me for a long time. When I emerged from the bathroom, the Indian was waiting with a cup of tea. “Who do you think did this?”

“I don’t know.”

“Would they have come after you or me?”

“Whoever it was was jus’ after the birds. That’s why they sent dogs.”

The Indian watched me, and for once I answered with the same silence he usually reserved for me. “What about your dad. I told you I hear things. People say he threw fights.”

“What people? Jus’ the jealous kind.”

“They say he would switch bands so birds were fighting in lower weight classes. He would switch the birds, too.”

“What a lie! If true, my uncle like tell me. If not, if he neva know,—”

“I’m sure your uncle did know. All those men probably do.”

“My dad neva like dat,” I yelled. “He da best pitta on island!”

“ ‘The,’ not ‘da,’ ” the Indian said automatically. “I’ve told you before I don’t trust those men. And I don’t like who you are with those birds.”

“Maybe you don’t like me an-y-more.”

“I’ve never said that. I love you. You know that. But tonight, they could have hurt us. They could have hurt you.” The Indian didn’t sound angry.

I took a deep breath and placed my empty mug in the sink. “Tonight is never going to happen again.” I looked into the Indian’s eyes and placed a hand on his hip.

“So you’ll stop fighting?”

I hesitated but then nodded.

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

The Indian kissed me on the cheek, like he believed me, but when I went upstairs to bed, he didn’t follow. I thought about what I had promised him, and I told myself I wasn’t lying. I would stop, as soon as I beat Mr. Oh.

A couple hours later I awoke. The Indian’s side of the bed was cool. When I looked out the window, his truck was gone, as were the bags of dead animal, and the roosters were already crowing that it was time to rise.

The Indian and I found our way back to a delicate recreation of the past, the good months. He eventually returned to our bed, though this time without a poem tacked to the bathroom mirror, and when he wanted me, he took me in the dark, without whispering “Poi Dog,” without watching me undress.

The September derby required a minimum of four birds, so I borrowed a black from Uncle Lee. When the
Indian asked why I had acquired a new bird, I told him I was just training the animal for my uncle. The Indian’s eyes got small and dark, but he didn’t say anything more.

I could have won back the Indian in the months that followed. I could have given up on the fighting, or given up preparing to fight. I could have given up on my dad, too, who I knew was dead and not coming back. I could have gone to the Indian and asked his forgiveness and felt him pull my body beneath his, the heat of his flesh warming mine, until I belonged to him completely. I had an entire summer to give the birds to Uncle Lee and rake clean the yard and dismantle the teepees and hear silence at dawn instead of the cocks crowing. Four months. But it could have been four years, or forty. I was the kind of girl who took care of things, who could be trusted. I couldn’t go back on that now.

When September came I was ready. On the day of the fight, my uncle arrived with his truck. It had a covered bed, the kind that’s perfect for hiding your birds from other competitors. We tucked the four cages beneath the tonneau cover, and I added containers of food and water. After my uncle left, I made a big show of cleaning up the yard, as if the birds were gone for good, and then I came back inside the house. The Indian was on the living room couch with a book of Bashō’s poetry in his lap. He had a poker game later that evening, so I knew he would leave for town soon.