House of Many Gods (13 page)

She talked softly now. “Rosie. You’ve seen me these past two years. I’ve never worked so hard. I don’t remember anything but textbooks. Formulas. Equations. Med school means another four—five years. Twice as hard. Can you imagine? Even if I got accepted, I’d need to take out a loan. Then internship, residency. My God. I’d be twenty-seven, twenty-eight before I earn a decent income.”

“And so? And so? We talked about it nights when you were climbing up the road. You, and Lopaka. You’re first-generation college in this house. First-generation
anything
. You are our dreams. Lopaka’s going to be a lawyer even though he started late. All our savings go for you and him. What else are savings for? All you got to do is try. Then you
kōkua
kids coming up behind you. That’s
‘ohana
. What life is for.”

She hesitated, not used to doing things that weren’t her idea. “Rosie, do you know how many students drop out of med school every year? Suppose I try, and fail?”

“Ana. You never try, you never know.”

“I’m tired. I’m not that smart! I thought I was, I’m not. I have to cram and pray for every grade.”

Rosie stood now, hands on hips. She looked out at the night, then turned and looked at Ana.

“Let me tell you something, girlie. You can do
anything
you set your
mind to. You don’t want to hear this but … you’re just like your mama. Nerves of steel when you make up your mind. I don’t care if it takes ten, twenty years. Just say you want to be a doctor. That you’ll try.”

She cried then. “I want it more than anything. I want to make you proud.”

“I will be proud,” Rosie said. “You will be a healer.”

O
NE DAY AFTER CLASSES SHE FOUND THE FAMILY GATHERED IN
front of the TV. There had been an accident on the U.S. mainland.

“Place called Three Mile Island, state of Pennsylvania,” Rosie said. “One of those reactor things broke down. Oh, look … people vomiting.” She held Makali‘i in her lap, while younger children gathered round, asking if they were all going to die.

“Shhh,” Ben cried. “Saying thousands of folks breathed in dat stuff. Even in dere water now. Ho! Look dem cows, lying down. Say radio-iodine already in dere milk. Look dat field, hundreds dead birds. All da flowers black.”

The newscaster quoted experts as saying that half the residents of central Pennsylvania were affected by the Three Mile Island meltdown. “America’s worst nuclear disaster.”

Ben quickly turned off the TV. Then one of the old aunties spoke.

“
A‘ole pilikia!
No worries. We’re thousands of miles from that state Pennsylvania.”

Lopaka slowly turned to her. “You think we’re safe? The U.S. military is our biggest industry.”

“So? That makes our islands
safer
.”

“No. It makes us potential victims. Right now we’ve got two dozen nuclear subs homeported here in Pearl Harbor. You think they don’t have accidents on those ships? Millions of gallons of radioactive waste from those subs have already been dumped into the harbor.”

“Lopaka, hush,” Rosie said. “Wait till I get these youngsters off to bed.”

She herded the children from the room, then returned and sat facing him. “Now. How do you know all this stuff?”

“My professors. Most of them are liberals. Environmentalists.”

He glanced round the room, his handsome dark face flushed. “You folks have any idea what’s going on? You know what’s just down the road at Lualualei Naval Reservation? They got chemical and biological
weapons stashed in underground arsenals. Why do you think that whole valley is restricted? It’s also a nuclear-weapons depot. Armed soldiers patrolling day and night.”

Ana shook her head. “I don’t believe you.”

“You ever try driving into the valley at Lualualei? You want to see? Come on.”

She followed him out to his truck, then Rosie followed, squeezing Ana in between them. He drove up the coastal highway to the town of Lualualei, then turned right onto a road that took them deep into the valley, toward what was known as Lualualei Naval Reservation, a high-security military base no local had ever been inside of. Along the road the signs began. TURN BACK. RESTRICTED AREA.

Rosie glanced at him, alarmed. “You been out here before?”

“Plenty times. Now watch what happens.”

He suddenly swerved off the road into deep grass and drove along a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire, until he saw a truck-sized hole. He drove through the hole and they entered deep woods, dense groves of trees. Through the trees they saw another high-security perimeter fence topped with barbed wire.

“They got them set in deeper and deeper, like Russian dolls.”

He swerved through the trees and drove along the inner fence until it suddenly became a double chain link, topped by blinding high-intensity lights. Every few yards was an electronic surveillance detection system. Then more signs. RESTRICTED AREA. USE OF DEADLY FORCE AUTHORIZED.

“Turn around,” Rosie said.

“Not yet.”

In the distance, they saw what looked like armed guards in watch-towers.

“Now tell me, you think they’d have security like this if it was just a boot camp?”

Without warning, Lopaka bounced onto a paved road intersecting the groves of trees. Dead ahead to the right was a gate with posted sentries. Before they ever reached it, they were surrounded by three jeeps, half a dozen soldiers pointing rifles.

He skidded to a stop and stuck his head out the window at two approaching soldiers. “Sorry. We took a wrong turn.”

One of the soldiers moved close, squinting like a marksman.

“Yeah. Through a high-security fence! You people like fucking with
us, don’t you? You know this area’s KAPU. Now, turn your
kānaka
butts around before we blow your tires.”

“You blow our tires, how you going get rid of us?”

The soldier flung the door of the truck open and grabbed Lopaka by the arm. “Okay, wise guy. Out. Out of the truck!”

Four others dismounted from their jeeps and gathered with their rifles aimed. They looked wired, ready to explode.

He was wearing baggy shorts, and now he swung out with his braced and damaged leg. “So, what you going do? Shoot me in my good leg?”

Rosie slid out of the truck, yelling her head off. “Shame! Shame on you, pointing rifles at us! You know how this boy got crippled? Vietnam. He came home with four medals for bravery and scar tissue for a leg. Fighting for America. For you! You like shoot us? Go ahead. Shoot us all!”

The soldier who had pulled Lopaka from the truck lowered his rifle. “Get back in the truck. Get outta here.”

Lopaka took one step closer, and spoke softly. “These lands are our lands. You stole them from us. You’re storing nuclear weapons here. You’re testing bombs up the highway at Mākua. You think we’re stupid? We don’t know? … You think this is what I fought for? To watch my homelands blown to bits?”

The soldier looked down. He looked at his buddies. “Please. Get in the truck. Go home.”

As they backed up and pulled away, Lopaka shouted out the window, “Hope you guys are wearing dosimeters! This whole base is leaking radiation.”

On the drive back, they were silent, still in shock.

Ana finally turned to him. “You’ve known about this all along, haven’t you?”

“Be blind not to.” He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “Frankly, that’s not what really bugs me. It’s the day-to-day stuff. Radioactive water from the harbors and rivers seeping into our soil. The stuff we stand in, in our fields. Stuff that seeps into the grass our dairy cows and pigs eat. And I’m bugged by those big naval radio towers out on Pa‘akea Road up the highway toward Ma‘ili. Those things emit electromagnetic radiation. The Navy has even admitted their hazard zone is two and a half miles in radius. That means all those farmers and kids could be contaminated …”

His voice trailed off, exhausted.

“I hear things on campus, too,” Ana said. “They’ve installed high-frequency radar-tracking stations on each of our islands. Those things leak that same electromagnetic stuff. They say it causes Alzheimer’s. Blindness. Mental retardation. Our trade winds blow that filth back and forth. We breathe it, it builds up inside us. One day we’ll end up like those Three Mile Islanders.”

Lopaka pulled up to the house and they fell silent, seeing the fields hung in moonlight. Then clouds suddenly enveloped the moon as if a hand had brushed a light switch.

Rosie stepped out of the truck. “I’m sick at heart. Don’t discuss this stuff in front of the elders, or the kids. Good night.”

Ana felt the heat of his arm touching hers. She didn’t even have to look at him. “Why didn’t you tell me you knew all this?”

“I didn’t want to scare you. So many ugly facts, it takes time to understand it. To even
believe
it. This whole damned coast, from Pearl Harbor all the way to the tip at Ka’ena Point, has become a nuclear playground. And now we’re a priority target for terrorists.”

He finally turned to her. “I don’t even know the words for this, an injustice so immense. And I don’t know what we do about it.”

“Yes, you do. We fight back.”

A
NA JOINED A WATCHDOG GROUP ON CAMPUS, ATTENDING VIGILS
and rallies. She marched, carrying banners. DESTROY BOMBS NOT PEOPLE. NO MORE WAR GAMES ON OUR SACRED LANDS. She was arrested for throwing a water bag that hit a policeman in the neck. Livid, Ben bailed her out.

“Where’s your respect? Your father was a cop. And you had to hit a
white
cop.”

“His skin wasn’t white. It was … room tone.”

Even Rosie scolded her. “You crazy? You’re a student, not a gang girl.”

“They were tearing down our banners. I lost my temper.”

“Well, you better find it, girlie. You’re beginning to remind me of my mama.”

Ana stared at her in shock. “Your mama was insane. She tried to kill you. I, on the other hand, would die for you.”

But she suspected Rosie was partly right. There was something that now and then took hold of Ana. She thought it might be rage. Residual rage. It started with a buzzing in her head, then a slow constriction in her
breathing as if she were choking, like something on a leash. Something running up and down a clothesline. She wondered if it was something else she felt, not rage.

“Maybe I use my temper to hide fear. Maybe I shout to get attention. I’m afraid if I don’t shout, people will forget I’m there. I’ll be ignored.”

Rosie looked out at the clothesline, remembering. “Okay. We had it rough. The worst is over. I think God has big plans for us.”

“Tell God I’ll make my own plans.”

“Don’t get too high-tone, Ana. You already got the profile of a bitter mouth. Next comes empty heart.”

Empty heart. Hard heart. Bleeding or broken heart. She was always amazed at how folks threw that word around. When she tried to envision her own heart, it came up plum-colored and prickly. A moody muscle in its solitary cage.

But some nights, hand pressed to her heart, Ana stood up from her bed and, like a mystic on hot coals, crept cautiously to the kitchen. She stared at the phone, then picked it up and dialed in a frenzy, before she lost her nerve. She listened. Sometimes she listened for thirty rings, imagining a perfect house with perfect rooms, echoing each ring.

One night when her mother answered, Ana did not instantly hang up. They listened to each other’s breathing.

Finally, her mother spoke. “I’m very proud of you.”

She stared down at the holes in the plastic mouthpiece and carefully replaced it in its cradle. She had not seen the woman in seven years.

B
Y THE TIME HE WAS TEN, THERE WAS NO PITY IN HIM, NOT EVEN
for himself. Through brief summer days—when statues of war heroes saluted the luminous twilight in this dusty corpse of a city—and through long winter nights—when numbing winds blew from the Bay of Finland, sheathing trees in ice—Nikolai learned to move through Leningrad by stealth, his movements pivotal and quick.

He learned where the best pickings were, what garbage heap, and to limp with a “deformed” leg while begging for kopecks outside hotels, his large black eyes giving his face an urgency. He learned to pilfer odds and ends and to sell them for black bread and sausages, and with his natural aptitude for stillness, he became expert at picking pockets in spite of his oversized hands.

Still parsimoniously thin, he navigated across the perilous aisles of skidding traffic on wide Nevsky Prospekt without looking left or right. When a street beggar died, he would listen for that final breath leaking out like an old Russian epitaph. Then he stepped forward, unlaced their boots, and ran. These he bartered, or when they fit he slept with them against his chest, his fingers calmly discerning the spectral shape of the former owner’s foot.

At night, against the shivery sounds of balalaikas on the Neva River, he ran home through arctic
souks
and labyrinthine streets that bled out to narrow muddy lanes where he slid back into his netherworld of drainage pipes that swallowed humans whole. Here he nested with tribes of street kids, some so scarred and used up they were already old.