Anywhere but Paradise (4 page)

I SETTLE ONTO
my temporary army surplus bed with squeaky springs. With my binder paper and crayons, I compose my window-washing business advertisement.

Hawaiian music floats through my window from next door. A steel guitar and ukulele pluck and strum the sunny melody. A bass joins in. I can’t catch all the words, but I hear
aloha
. The voices echo, mirroring a bright, cloudless day. I lift my chin, slow my breathing, and picture the light.

Sometimes a song sounds like a question, sometimes it sounds like an exclamation point, sometimes like a dot-dot-dot-to-be-continued story. This one sounds like an answer or at least the beginning of one.

The song takes me back to Saturday. We saw the Kodak Hula Show, just steps from the sand on Waikiki Beach. We perched on the top row of the bleachers in the squinty sunshine. The grassy area below was roped
off for the performance, and just beyond, surfers navigated the sparkling blue the best they could. The breeze stirred the salty air with suntan lotion and flowers. I wore my still-fresh flower lei. Tourists clicked cameras all around. It was our second day here. And I sat inside a perfect-picture postcard.

Dancers in green leaf skirts, red tops, and yellow plumeria leis shook matching feather gourds in unison to a quick-moving song. Then, wearing long muumuus, they swayed ever so gracefully to more stories. I could have watched for hours.

Right then and there, I decided hula was for me. I wanted to dance just like them.

Turns out, it was meant to be.

Mrs. Halani lives next door and she gives lessons. Daddy knew her and Mr. Halani from when he was stationed here during World War II. They have a son in high school and a daughter my age. But I haven’t met the girl yet on account of her chicken pox. It seemed like it took forever for my own itchy red spots to go away last year.

On Sunday, Mrs. Halani told me she’s been teaching for more than fifteen years. She said her students are as young as four and as old as seventy-two. She said she could teach anyone to hula.

I figure that includes me. For as long as I’m here.

My First Lesson

THE CLASS LINES UP
in three straight rows. I choose a spot in the back and curl my toes into the woven mat.

We face Mrs. Halani at the front of her garage-turned-studio. Red and yellow feather gourds, bamboo sticks, and smooth black stones fill the shelves behind her. To my left and right are floor-to-ceiling mirrors.

Our willowy, tall teacher wears her dark hair stylishly short. A pink plumeria blossom is bobby-pinned behind her left ear, and a gold bracelet with black letters decorates one wrist.

I stand beside a girl whose hair flows below her waist. She smiles.

There might be a girl from my homeroom in the front row, but I’m not sure. There’s a pink ribbon in her hair, but she’s not in school clothes.

Mrs. Halani begins to sing about lovely hula hands.
Thank goodness it’s in English with just a smidgen of Hawaiian, so I can mostly understand. Her voice is high and soft and sweet. Her body dips and sways as her arms and hands tell a story about aloha, love. But it’s different from the one I heard a little while ago. When she sings the mushy part, we try to act nonchalant, but a few laughs spurt out.

“Now repeat after me,” Mrs. Halani says, and begins again.

I take in the song, raise my arms, and move my feet. I am a bird.

I bump into the girl next to me. “Sorry,” I whisper.

“Remember to smile,” says Mrs. Halani.

I picture myself onstage at the Gladiola Rec Center. I am the wind.

My elbow pokes the girl’s ear. “Sorry, again.”

The song ends and the girl rubs her shoulder. “Make that sorry times three,” I say.

“You’ll catch on,” she says.

“Peggy Sue,” says Mrs. Halani. “Let’s focus on your footwork the next time through. We’ll get to the hands later.”

Practice. All I need to do is practice.

All day every day.

Like an Olympian.

After class, Mrs. Halani lets me post one of my flyers in her studio. “Saving for something special?” she asks.

“Just summer extras,” I say. I keep it short, hoping she won’t ask me anything else.

“You’re very smart,” she says. “It’s always good to put a little aside.”

Older girls prance in for the next class and I scoot out. I plaster the neighborhood with a dozen ads. The sky is still dark up by the mountain range, but here by the water, it’s only partly cloudy.

Washed Out

“I MIGHT NOT BE UP
for a trip to the store for your sewing supplies after all,” says Mama when I return from posting my window-washing ads. She’s still on the couch. Her sunglasses perch atop her head and her eyes read tired.

“I can go by myself,” I say. The store is a fifteen-minute walk away. “Mrs. Barsdale recommended Fujimoto’s Five-and-Dime, and I know exactly where it is.”

“That might be for the best,” says Mama. “Take my wallet and an umbrella. It’s been threatening all day.”

I risk it and leave the umbrella. The sun flickers behind clouds as I retrace my route to school, cut across the practice fields, and skip over to Kealoha Drive. The main business section is one long block with a few side streets. Fujimoto’s Five-and-Dime is at the end. The sky grows darker and heavier.

On this side of the street, the stores stand alone. I walk close in, avoiding cars parked almost to their doors. Seascapes on easels front the art gallery window. Pink coral earrings, strands of pearls, and bracelets of jade rest on black velvet at the jewelry store. A fat drop of water lands on my shoulder, another on my shoe. The five-and-dime closes soon and I want to get back in case it pours.

I’m in and out in fifteen.

I stand under the store’s entryway and watch the raindrops fall closer together. I stuff my bag of purchases under my blouse and lunge into the drippy wet. By the time I charge across the fields at school, the rain is steady. Mud splatters up the back of my legs with each step. My shoes are in soggy ruin.

I bet it’s raining at the quarantine station, too. Howdy doesn’t take to stormy weather. As soon as rain comes, he slinks under a bed or behind a chair. I hope his kennel doesn’t leak. I hope tonight his bench will do.

We eat supper as soon as I finish showering.

And I tell my parents all about my new business.

“You’ll be flooded with calls,” says Daddy.

I hope. But the phone hasn’t rung yet.

“Mama, did I miss any while I was out?”

“No,” she says, rubbing her temples. “Not a one.”

After dessert, I stack the plates on the counter and reach for the receiver on the wall phone across the teeny kitchen. Maybe the line is dead. But before the phone reaches my ear, I hear the monotone. Quicker than quick, I return it to its cradle so callers won’t get a busy signal and give up.

Of course. The rain. The rain washed all of my words away.

Ocean or Train?

IT’S STILL DARK.

Dawn won’t come for hours.

Slowly, I stretch my legs so as not to disturb my cat.

Then I remember: Howdy’s not there.

I shiver in the coolness, pull up my covers, hug my pillow, and listen.

In the stillness, I hear shushing sounds like the soft inhale and the louder, stronger exhale of the trains that pass through Gladiola while we sleep.

But this isn’t Gladiola. This isn’t a train.

It’s the ocean.

If it weren’t for other houses and trees, I could see the big blue from here. Hanu Road winds next to the beach, with occasional side streets angling to the water. If I could walk a straight line, the beach is across the road and eight houses away. Down a ways to the left, a beach park with coconut trees and tall,
tall, ironwood trees with long needles and thimble-size pinecones stand just yards from the water.

I close my eyes and pretend I hear a train. That I’m home.

Sharing

“AN INDUSTRIOUS START,”
says Mrs. Barsdale, the home ec teacher, the next morning at school. Her hair doesn’t appear to have strayed one strand since yesterday. She inspects my fabric pieces at a huge table in the back of the room. “Though I always check my students’ work before they cut.”

I wrinkle my eyebrows. I must’ve missed hearing her say that. I stayed up late specifically to cut out the pattern.

“But it looks like you did well.” Mrs. Barsdale reaches into her lab coat pocket, pulls out a scrap of paper and a pencil, and scribbles something.

“Oh, no!” someone hollers from the front of the room.

“Excuse me, I’ll be right back,” Mrs. Barsdale says, and hurries toward the girls congregating around a machine by the door. “Class,” she yells. “Sit down. Be
quiet. Work.” She takes a breath and adds, “Eighth graders, I expect you to lead by example.”

A girl in line for the ironing boards near the windows might be the same one from homeroom and hula. There’s a pink ribbon in her hair.

Sewing machines drone. Hands wave every which way, but Mrs. Barsdale doesn’t seem to notice.

“We share machines,” the teacher says when she returns, and motions me toward the front of the room.