Diamond Head (14 page)

Behind her eyelids, Amy waits. She dreads what’s on the other side. She weighs her options and does nothing, suspended in the dark, hanging there, letting it swallow her. When she can no longer deny that Kaipo’s speech is over, when she hears the sound of bodies adjusting, of voices murmuring in hushed agreement—still, she does not open her eyes.

Mom
, she hears.
Are you okay?

She doesn’t move. Her mind is far away.

1942

H
ONOLULU
, H
AWAII

My father’s photography studio was one of the few on the island, and the only studio in Waikiki. Before I began to work for him, his regular clients were mostly babies and toddlers dressed in ridiculous lace dresses with matching bows strapped around their bald little heads. Sometimes it took my father four hours to shoot a single baby. He would obsess over the angle of the wicker chair and tilt the child’s head in a hundred directions, waiting for the precise moment when the sunlight poured through the studio window. Usually the babies would cry and the toddlers would throw themselves to the floor before he could get his perfect shot and the parents would have to bring them back the next day.

At noon, when the sun is right above this skylight
, he would say excitedly, his finger pointing upward as the parents bounced their exhausted children on their hip.

When I was younger, when my father was late for dinner, my mother would say that he was so slow to take those pictures because he preferred his studio to being home with us.
And who wouldn’t,
she’d mutter, bending under furniture, shaking out the rug too many times,
the mongoose would not live in these conditions!
My father, when he finally arrived home at nine or ten, would say that his perfectionism was
merely a testament to his dedication
. He said it as if he were a legendary artist and my mother would never understand. Even at fourteen, I knew he was wrong. The way he always left us, the way he came home, like a silhouette, his form was present but never his contents. Everything important, everything he cared about, it seemed he kept in Waikiki.

Like a TV show with only one episode, it was always the same fight.

My parents would be in the kitchen, on the other side of the sheet that divided our house in two. I’d hear my mother whispering in her harshest tone while dishes clattered in the sink. I could always tell how distraught she was by how high the faucet was turned up, by the sound her dish washing made. If a cup smashed, it was an emergency. There would be tears.
God damn it
, she’d whisper, and I knew she was crying for the cup, because already there were so few.

Then, over the sound of running water, I’d hear my father respond with a joke. I wouldn’t make out the words but his tone was enough. The faucet would turn off and my mother would be gone, wandering the neighborhood until she had cooled off. I had long suspected she was smoking cigarettes. When she returned home, she went immediately to wash her hands. But it made me happy to think of her smoking in the dark, taking long drags and blowing them sideways into the wind. My mother indulged in so few things; she deserved at least that.

But then the bombs fell, we declared war on Japan, and everything changed for us. It was strange that war could bring us such good fortune, but that’s what happened. The beige phone in my father’s studio, usually silent for entire weeks, would not stop ringing.

Every day, we found ourselves flooded with more clients than we were capable of photographing, and for that first week, I ran around the small studio apologizing and refreshing my smile, racking my brain for a solution. It frustrated me endlessly to watch men leave the studio without a portrait. They had come to us with money, real money, and we had turned them away. Each day I counted them; five lost clients meant fifteen dollars uncollected. That was a week’s pay. Half a month’s rent. More cigarettes than my mother could smoke in a year. And then I’d look at my father, who had been shooting the same man for nearly two hours, and I knew change was up to me. And I could, I told myself. In years of listening to my parents fight
the same circular battle, never finding a solution, I had learned a few things. Money was a serious world, a masculine world—that’s what my mother didn’t understand. If I hoped for success, there would be no emotions, no broken cups, no walking away without an agreement.

“Think about it,” I said to my father. We were on the bus, passing through Chinatown on our way home. “They don’t care about the art. They’re going to
war
. All they want is a picture that makes them look handsome, and I know you can do that in under an hour. Even with the curfew, we’d make more money than we could spend.”

The island had just come under martial law, which meant that between the hours of six and six, we had to be off the streets with our lights out. The radio told us that a lit cigarette or tobacco pipe could be cause for arrest, as could the light from a radio dial or the flame of a kitchen stove. I took the warnings seriously, and every night I made sure we were home before the sun touched the horizon.

My father let out a low sigh and leaned his head back against the plastic seat.

“You weren’t supposed to turn out like this,” he complained. “Didn’t I teach you anything as a child? You were supposed to be an artist!”

“And I will be,” I interrupted. “But you need money for art. You taught me that, remember? So let’s make our money while we have the opportunity. These are your own words, Dad!
Ability is nothing without opportunity.
” It was one of his favorite defenses in battle with my mom. It gave the impression of humility, of looking for a solution without actually offering any. I pushed forward, watching him respond to this, his own wisdom.

“If the soldiers pay the three dollars, let them do what they want. Maybe some of them want to smile—”

“No smiling,” he said immediately. He crossed his arms across his chest like a child. “Ruins my film. Makes the pictures look cheap.”

“Okay, okay.” I turned my head to the window and smiled. I knew
he would say that, but I wanted to see how far he could be pushed. I wanted to know how badly we needed the money. It felt strange to be talking to him like this, somehow nostalgic for a time I faintly remembered, kindling something I knew was very nearly spent. All these years later, it was a beautiful, twisted thought. If the war sustained, if the soldiers continued to enlist, I might just meet the dignified man my mother claimed she married.

“So no smiling.” I faced him, straight-faced. “But you’ll seat the soldiers in half-hour slots, starting at eight. And I’ll make appointments so you’ll have to stay on track!”

My father paused, closing his eyes as if I had just asked him the greatest favor in the world.

“An hour,” he said, his eyes still closed. “And those weren’t my words, about opportunity. They were Napoleon’s.”

“Is that so?” I paused. “Forty-five minutes.”

“Who raised you?” he cried, opening his eyes and turning to face me. He took my chin in his hand and turned it toward him, studying my face. “You can’t be mine.”

“Don’t worry,” I told him. “You’ll have no problem claiming me when we’re rich.”

The next day we began our new schedule, and by the time we closed up shop at four, we had collected twenty-one dollars, which I’m fairly certain my father had never earned in an entire week, let alone a single day. He wouldn’t say it, and I didn’t expect him to, but I could see it in his face. He suppressed a smile all day as we collected payment after payment, the soldiers happy to be in and out in under an hour. It was satisfying in a way I’d never felt before; a pleasure I imagined was limited to being a man, able to make money from your mind and not just your hands. But it had nothing to do with being a man, I decided, and everything to do with ambition, with desire and opportunity. I could save my father’s business; I could restore his name. Every dollar was a new possibility, a door that had been locked for
our entire lives. My father’s camera clicked and I saw a coat of fresh paint on our house—the whole house, the upstairs now ours as well. I saw a set of porcelain cups, a four-poster bed, a record player on a table large enough for twelve.

Every day, I thought of these things as I sat at the cash register. My duties as my father’s assistant were limited. My daily tasks were usually finished by noon, so I spent most of my day entertaining the soldiers, chatting with them as they waited for their time slot. From this, I received a different kind of gratification. I was asked on dates almost every week—some of them good, most of them not. With the new curfew, the soldiers had to be creative with their proposals. I got asked to picnics and afternoon drives along the shore, shave ice and morning dim sum. My father would listen in on our chatter, smirking at me when he could. He gave each of my suitors a nickname, like “Big Mustache” and “Small Uniform” and “Cheap Guy.” He would quiz the men on American politics and history before letting them take me out, showing an interest in who I dated for the first time in my life. I didn’t mind. Really, I think I enjoyed it. I liked the attention—not from the soldiers, but from my father, who had been absent for so long.

It was Big Mustache, or Henry Wong, who lingered around the studio one day, charming both me and my father. He had just sat for his photograph, and I had spent the forty-five minutes deciding whether or not I thought he was handsome. He was the first man with a mustache who had struck me as attractive, and while I considered his other qualities—his big eyes, his full lips, his black hair that was both wavy and thick—I realized that he was looking back at me, too.

“Focus on me, son, not on the girl,” my father instructed from behind his camera. “I know she’s pretty but you’ll just have to wait.”

Henry laughed nervously and I pretended not to hear. Great laugh, I thought to myself as I shuffled together two pieces of blank paper.

After his appointment, Henry came to pay me at the register. And
to apologize for staring, he said. He hadn’t meant to, he’d just gotten a little distracted. I let myself smile and I could feel it grow. Henry was handsome. It wasn’t the kind of handsome you would recognize in a crowd or from across a room. It was quieter than that but it was there, in the ease of his eyes, in the calm of his voice.

“It’s okay,” I replied. “I think I was a bit distracted, too.”

Henry went silent. His hand was still on the counter between us, fingers resting on his three dollars. He looked at me as if he had something to say, but had forgotten how to say it. I held his gaze and waited for him to remember.

“I’d like to do this again sometime,” he said. He shook his head, a shy smile escaping him. “I mean. Not the staring part. But maybe a date? I promise I’ll wear something else.” He opened his arms to display his uniform.

“Listen,” my father said from across the room. He had already begun with the next soldier. “You can take out my daughter if you can answer one question. It’s easy, really. Any soldier should know.”

Henry turned to my father. He stood up straighter. “This is your daughter, sir?”

“That she is,” he replied, squatting to get a new angle, camera pressed to his face. “Aren’t you, Amy?”

“Yes, I am, Dad.”

“So are you going to answer the question or not?”

“Yes,” Henry said, turning briefly to me. “Yes, of course. Go ahead, ready when you are, sir.”

My father cleared his throat.

“State the military experience of the American president, Franklin D. Roosevelt.”

This question
, I thought to myself. My father had asked it twice already. Only one of the soldiers had answered correctly and that date had been a complete disaster. We had nothing in common and he wouldn’t stop rambling about fighter planes and midget submarines, mouth full of dumplings.

But Henry seemed like a different species entirely. There was something familiar about him, something compelling about the way he spoke to me. I thought about scribbling the answer on a scrap of paper and sliding it to him from behind the register.

Henry thought for a moment, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his uniform. The soldier being photographed smirked at him and was promptly scolded by my father.

“None,” Henry said suddenly.

“What did you say, son?”

“The answer is none. Sir. President Roosevelt has no military experience.”

My father snapped a picture and turned around for the first time.

“Exactly right. You may pick Amy up at three when her shift is over. She must be home by five thirty. No exceptions! I don’t want any policemen knocking on my door tonight.” He paused for a moment, and then remembering his thought, he said, “And good luck out there. We have a president with no military experience commanding a war.” He turned abruptly to the soldier he was photographing. “Don’t think I can’t see you grinning!”

Henry looked at me and mouthed the words
Is he serious
, his face caught somewhere between shock and delight.
Completely,
I mouthed back.
See you at three
.

As promised, Henry came at three, pulling up in a black Ford coupe. He wore a white collared shirt and navy blue pants, both freshly pressed. I could tell he was nervous, and it made me nervous too.

“Back so soon?” my father said as he walked through the studio doors.

“She’ll be home before curfew, Mr. Chan. And safely. I’ll make sure of it.” They exchanged nods and I knew my father liked him.

“Go on, then,” he said, winking at me as I grabbed my purse off its hook and walked out the door.