Diamond Head (15 page)

Henry drove effortlessly, as if the gearshift were simply an
extension of his right arm, the engine revving quietly as he made easy conversation. We were going to the Pali, he told me, in Nuuanu, and my eagerness for our afternoon soared. I knew what it was—a lookout at the top of the Koolau Range, a hidden piece of elevation. Something spectacular I’d heard of while cleaning houses, through the daughters, a place I’d never been because my family had never owned a car.

The Old Pali Highway was a throughway built a century before. It was the first road to connect Honolulu and the windward side of the island, famous for the eight hundred skulls found during construction, thought to belong to the Hawaiian warriors who fell to their deaths from the jagged cliffs above. The road was narrow, in places not wide enough for two cars to pass, squeezed up against the mountainside and shaded by enormous low-hanging trees, almost tunnel-like in their density. Along the cliff, emerald vines fell from above, leaves dangling off them like charms on a bracelet. I gaped out the window as Henry talked, trying to memorize what I saw, already wanting to tell my sisters.

Henry was not a combat soldier. He was an engineer, leaving for Europe at the end of the month to work on the telephone lines. He had two siblings, an older brother who worked in his parents’ pharmacy and a sister—three years younger—who would like me, he said.

We slowed for a narrow turn, starting our ascent of the mountain, and I began to tell Henry about my family, all ten of them, their names rolling off my tongue in alphabetical order,

“. . . then Denise, Eileen, Francine, and Grace. Plus my younger brothers Rich—”

“Holy smokes,” he interrupted, “there’re boys too?”

“Three of them! You think my father would come home at night if there were only seven girls?”

“Well, hell,” he said, his voice suddenly serious. “You’re not making this easy on me, you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“A father, a mother, three brothers,
six
sisters. How will I manage to impress them all? Maybe I can build you guys a telephone line. How about that? Will they let me marry you if I can build a telephone line?”

I looked at him, ready to object, but he was already looking back at me, the road ahead a perfectly straight line. The lowering sun flickered in and out of the car windows as we passed below the latticed branches suspended above, through fleeting shadows that broke into sunlight. “Moonlight Cocktail” was on the radio. I liked him a lot.

“I . . .” I began. “It’d have to be a pretty nice telephone line,” I said instead, feeling my lungs expand into the crevices of my chest and slowly fall. I knew I should be careful—that a man who introduced the word
marriage
within fifteen minutes was usually the most fickle kind of man. His audacity should have scared me, but I didn’t feel that way with Henry. It had the opposite effect; I felt courageous.

The car began to wind its way up the Koolau mountains, hugging the moss-covered cliff to the right, a perilous open expanse to our left. There was no guard rail, no barrier between us and the valley that grew deeper and deeper below. But Henry was steady with his car, maneuvering confidently as the houses below us turned into cluttered rooftops and the breeze drifting through the open windows became more forceful, emboldened with elevation.

“In the backseat, there’s a flower,” Henry said, pointing behind him. I turned and saw a single orchid next to two tin lunchboxes tied shut with a green ti leaf. “Lore has it that these two stones”—he pointed to the right as he slowed the car down—“are the bodies of Hawaiian goddesses, left to protect the Pali. Before we head back, we’ll leave the orchid under a stone as an offering to them. Then we’ll be ensured a safe trip down.”

“And the lunch boxes?” I asked. “Did the goddesses ask for a snack?”

“Those are for us,” Henry grinned. “But the ti leaf is to protect it from being stolen—by the angry spirits or by that other goddess. The volcano one.”

I knew there were old ghost stories set in this place—stories told to us as children about tired men tempted off the cliff by a beautiful ghost, or cars that wouldn’t start at the top and the hungry spirits who would attack the stranded passengers for food. Ancient wars were fought on these cliffs, hundreds of men dead, their ghosts left to wander. But they were stories; legends to keep us safe, to keep the folklore alive. So I couldn’t help but ask, “Do you actually believe in this stuff?”

“Of course not,” he replied, “but it’s fun.” He shifted as the hill got steeper and turned toward me, hesitating. “It is fun—isn’t it?”

He looked at me with such sincerity, waiting for my response—waiting for me to confirm that I was having a good time—that I couldn’t help but laugh at him. He had planned this entire afternoon for us; he had ironed his shirt, he had packed snacks. So far, it was the best date I’d ever been on and here he was, wondering if he’d done something wrong already. Happy laughter spilled from my mouth as I shook my head.

“Oh, come on!” he exclaimed, hitting the wheel with his palm. “I had to be inventive!” Now he was laughing too. “Your father didn’t exactly give me much time to plan
and
you have to be home by five thirty! That’s a lot of pressure, Amy.”

I placed my hand gently on top of his as he shifted into gear and began to slow the car. “Henry,” I said, the warmth of his skin finding an unexpected shyness within me. I pulled my hand away and closed it into a fist, trapping the heat within my fingers, suddenly aware of both of our bodies.

“It’s perfect,” I finally managed, my courage melting in my hand. Henry shifted once more and parked the car along a wide ridge with a clear view.

“Good,” he said. “And here’s the main event.”

I stepped out of the car and walked slowly to the ridge. When I looked over the edge I was immediately overcome with the most extraordinary nausea. My knees trembled softly. I felt faint and rickety and breathless.

I’d never seen Oahu the way I saw it that afternoon at the Pali. The Kaneohe that I’d lived in my entire life was suddenly a cluster of homes and fields on the valley floor—my entire world reduced to a sprinkling of roofs and patches of land. I had never felt so insignificant, so meaningless, but in the most remarkable way. The land below was wild and immense. I never knew it existed, never understood how large the fields reached around my home, how the land rippled in blankets of shrubbery and thick canopies of trees. It was a clear day, wind shifting the radiant mist north, away from where we stood alone, the lookout completely unspoiled by sightseers. In the distance, gorgeous, silvery clouds hung over Kaneohe Bay, echoing my elation.

I thought of how easily I could fall; how my body seemed to be filled with air and if pushed, I might float, like I was perfectly weightless. I spread my arms and took in the mountain air; I closed my eyes. It was the closest I have ever come to flying.

“Do you like it?”

I looked behind me and there was Henry, one of thousands of people on Oahu, one of the tiny bodies occupying the toy homes below. But he wasn’t just anyone, I decided. Not to me.

We stood at the ridge of the mountain, finding the roofs of our houses and our old schools and his parents’ little pharmacy, letting the wind blow over our bodies. I told him where I was when the bombs dropped, about Akio, something I had told no one but my sister Beverly, afraid of implicating him somehow. Akio and his gentle manner, his prideful workmanship: I would continue to see him this way, refusing to taint our years together with the hour that brought it to an end. The way he cried, the way he prayed, expelling a heartbreak that had become my own—that I could still feel, telling Henry
then, as I thought of Akio removing his keys, saw his sunken shoulders disappearing down the stairs.

Henry was at Hickam Field that day, right in the middle of it all. He told me how the marines were lying flat on their bellies, crates of ammo strewn beside them, shooting at the planes with their rifles.

“They were our own planes,” he said quietly, “we were shooting them down. There was so much confusion, they didn’t know what to attack. Our own men, they were taking off from Wheeler Field and we were shooting them down.

“They had me carry sand to put out the fires. Everyone not trained in combat was carrying sand, hauling it back and forth. When the Japs had dispersed and we took all the injured men to the navy hospital, they let some of us go. They told me to go and I went, didn’t ask if they needed more help, if they needed hands in the hospital. Just got in my car and left them.”

“I stole a pair of pruning shears,” I said, words arriving without my consent. It was the strangest thing, instinctual, forceful. “I carried them all the way home, fingers clenched around the handle. I walked into my house and it hit me. Two parents, nine little siblings, and for the entire walk, my only thoughts were of myself.”

We stood there for a minute, not saying a word, not offering the empty reassurances we’d heard from others. It was a comfortable silence, a safe space between us.

“Tell me more about the folklore,” I said, looking up from my hands.

“You’re hilarious,” Henry replied, his eyes squinting in the lowering sun.

“No,” I insisted, “I mean it. I’m interested.”

He walked slowly back to his car and leaned against it for a moment. “Okay,” he said, lifting himself onto the hood. “Let’s see. You don’t have any pork on you, do you?”

I hesitated. I couldn’t believe he’d just asked me that.

“Honestly?”

“No way,” he said, leaning forward on his knees, “and you were making fun of my orchid?”

I walked to the car and grabbed my purse, reaching to the bottom and feeling for the Spam musubi I had packed that morning as a snack. “I’m embarrassed,” I mumbled, tossing it to Henry on the hood of the car.

“We have to get rid of this,” he announced, studying my musubi in his hands. “This is dangerous material you have here.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Pork god, Amy. Half man, half pig. If you don’t toss this before we leave, the car might not start again and then you’ll be stuck with me forever. May I?” I nodded. He cocked his arm back and the next second, the musubi was hurtling high into the air, arching over the ridge and disappearing to the valley floor. “Much better. And now you should understand,” he reached behind him and grabbed the tin lunchboxes, “why I brought
poke
.

“See, the gods don’t care about fish,” he said, handing me a tin and a set of wooden chopsticks. I pulled on the ti leaf and opened the lid. Fat pieces of pink ahi and black sesame seeds were packed into the little box. It had been a long time since I’d eaten fish this fresh, this expensive. I lifted myself onto the hood of his car.

“Unbelievable,” I said, placing a piece of salty tuna on my tongue, “Where did you get this?”

Since the attack there had been nothing like this available on the island, at least not to my knowledge. The fish markets dried up, their supplies going straight to the government. Even meat, the worst cuts like hamburger and liver, was a rarity. It was for the soldiers; they needed protein more than the rest of us. It had been weeks of Spam, Vienna sausage, and tinned beef. It wasn’t such a leap for our family; we were used to cans and bags, skipping the expensive, perishable aisles at the grocery store. My sisters had already started a victory garden with the seeds from the state, growing cabbages and taro to sustain us through what would come. But
poke
, raw and buttery, fresh
from the ocean—even before the attack, I’d never seen it on my family’s table.

“I’m glad you like it,” Henry said, lifting a bite of fish with his chopsticks. “My uncle is a fisherman on the North Shore, and every Sunday my mom makes a different
poke
.” Henry paused. “You really don’t remember me at all, do you?”

I stopped chewing and put my chopsticks down. The way he had said it—casually, but with so much intention. It made everything in my body slow. I could feel the piece of tuna in my throat, could trace the blood pumping through my veins.

“What are you talking about?”

“It was a long time ago,” Henry said, looking down at his car. “We were kids on the North Shore. In Waialua.”

“Waialua?” I repeated. I hadn’t thought of that place in years. I hadn’t been there in even longer. My grandma lived on the North Shore. She had a small house on the water and I would spend summers there before she died. I was nine.

“With your grandma,” Henry said softly. “Do you remember?” He looked up at me and gently pushed my hair from my face. With one finger, he touched the outside of my eyebrow. “I think I gave you this scar.”

I pulled away from him; I touched my face and I remembered a boy. I saw him at the fish stand, small and skinny. It was by the docks, a few houses down from my grandma’s. She would send me to get her mahimahi on Tuesday mornings. It was all still there, a little hazy, but I remembered the wooden counter, the blue paint on the metal sign. My grandma knew the fisherman, and every week, he would put aside a fish for her, wrapped in newspaper. And he would have his nephew walk me home. It was Henry.

I touched my feet to the ground and stood from the car, walking to the edge of the cliff. That day, we stopped on the beach. We put the fish in the sand. I ran into the ocean and plunged into the water, holding my breath to thirty, counting slowly. When I came up for air, something flew toward me. A small, flat rock skimmed the water in
front of my face and jumped up. It struck me and I started to bleed; I screamed. Henry had been skipping rocks. I ran from the water to my grandma’s house. Henry hadn’t followed. It was the last time I saw him. The next morning, my mother came and brought me back to Kaneohe. My grandma had passed later that year, in November.

“I’m sorry,” Henry said behind me. “I didn’t mean to frighten you and I’m sorry if I did. It’s just when I saw you this afternoon I felt it immediately. Then your father said your name and I couldn’t believe it was you.”

Words escaped me, my mind buzzed with strange electricity. This whole time, I had been with Henry, the boy with the fish. The boy who walked me home, the boy who made me cry. I had thought about him the following summer, after we sold my grandma’s house and I knew I wouldn’t go back. I had missed him.