It was a bright day, unusually warm for Nuuanu. We were perched on a rock over the stream smoking a joint while inhaling that mossy freshwater scent from the waterfall. Earlier we’d swum behind the waterfall, holding onto the rocks there, yelling into its frigid, thunderous spray. Finally we were warm again, the blush of a sunburn starting on your long pale legs.
You asked me if I could please go on a double date with you and Steven and his friend. I rolled my eyes. “Another one?” The last one gave me the clap in the back of Steven’s van, I reminded you, then the schmuck had the nerve to call you to tell me I might have the clap. You’d sent me to your mom’s doctor, an OB/GYN rumored to be a secret abortionist. He told me to lie on the table with my legs in the stirrups, stuck his fingers up me then told me to get dressed. His nurse gave me a shot of penicillin. I felt dirty for the rest of the day and my arm where she injected me burned.
You sighed, bat your wet eyelashes at me. Always the flirt when you needed a favor. “But my folks won’t let me go out with Steven unless another couple is along.”
I never could figure out your parents. Your mother was Japanese, Japan Japanese as we said in Hawai’i, to distinguish a citizen of Japan from the local Japanese who were like the rest of us, Hawai’i’s melting pot. Citizens of Japan were a lot more formal. She didn’t speak much English and seemed for the most part quiet and demure. You had her smile and the shape of her eyes, but not her smallness. You said your mother named you the Japanese Katori, which translated into English means “little bird,” because your parents met on an international birding expedition and she assumed you’d be tiny like her. But you were tall and rangy like your dad, a history professor at UH. He mostly stayed in his den when he was home, surrounded by shelves of books with faded covers and yellowing pages, smoking his pipe. He looked like the cliché professor, towering and stooped, his pipe, wire-rimmed glasses, even a tweed jacket for chrissake, in Honolulu, schlepping his ancient falling-apart leather attaché case.
Which one of them objected to you being alone in a car with Steven, and which one of them thought double-dating with another couple would stop whatever it was they worried would happen? Your dad must’ve known that in those days to “date” was just another euphemism for having sex.
“What’s he look like, this date?” I asked you.
You grinned. You knew I couldn’t say no to you. “He’s really hot! A stone cold fox. Only…” you hesitated and I punched you lightly in the arm, making contact for a second, that silky, fair skin of yours. Everyone thought you were the fox, exotic folks said, the way your genes melded—half Japanese and half haole professor. Fine-boned Asian features with a voluptuous chest and hips, legs that didn’t quit, your almond-shaped dark brown eyes.
“Well, the thing is… he’s not very smart.”
I rolled my eyes. It wasn’t like “smart” was the number one sought after quality in a date those days. “You had me at hot,” I said.
“Yeah, but what I’m trying to tell you is he’s actually pretty stupid.”
I grinned. “Steven’s friend? What’s that say about your boyfriend?”
“That Steven’s probably bi,” you said. “Ray is drop-dead gorgeous.”
•
My memory has us meeting first before the official double-date, Ray and me. I see myself sprawled out on a lounge chair, beside a pool. But whose pool would it have been? My family didn’t have a pool and neither did yours. We lived in the same rainy Nuuanu zip code; in fact I remember first meeting you at the bus stop—would you remember that? Both our moms made us take the bus to school, though we went to different schools. But the Nuuanu bus was the only one that would carry us out of our wet valley into the blue-skies of Honolulu. You were wearing a super-short mini skirt and your long legs were the color of milk. You laughed when you saw what I was looking at, told me you’d probably get sent home to change your skirt. I nodded, said when it happened to me I loved it, like being given a free day, I said. I’d have to depend on the bus both ways, which takes awhile, and when I got home my parents would be at work so I’d blast the stereo, smoke a joint, fix myself some food and chill, as we’d say today.
You asked me if I thought your legs were too shark-skin white. I shook my head, told you they were so perfectly shaped no one would even look at the color. I think I may have been a little bi too, when it came to you.
So anyway, in my memory I’m on this lounge chair by somebody’s pool—maybe I was babysitting?—and this movie star opens the gate calling my name. So tall I saw the top of his head over the six-foot gate before he opened it, James Dean hair, shades on. He slinks over to me, a swivel to his hips the way water would walk if water had legs. Slips off his shades, extreme green eyes, lashes so long they looked fake. “Holy shit!” I muttered, something articulate like that, but I’d soon learn any damn thing that came out of my mouth made me sound like a genius in comparison. He grinned, and those perfect white teeth against his dark skin were so bright I was glad I’d kept my own shades on. “You must be Ray,” I said.
That night we had our double-date, the same kind of date we always had. Steven cruising around the island in his VW hippie van, painted with flowers and peace signs and the words Turn on, Tune in, Drop out; you’re up front next to him and I’m in the back with the seats removed, lying on a mattress beside Ray. We’re both on our stomachs propped up by our elbows, staring out the back window. The usual drill: we’d all pass a joint around, but that along with whatever tunes were selected in front and pumped to us through the rear speakers, was the only interaction we’d have with you and Steven. Which made conversation, such that it was, up to Ray and me, soon to become just me. That dude wouldn’t know a conversation topic if it bit him in the butt.
Picture the two of us, sprawled out on the mattress, close enough where our hip bones grazed each other’s, staring out that rear window of the moving van. “Trees,” he pointed to the side of the road.
I nodded, “What about them?”
“They’re moving,” he said.
“Yeah, kind of looks like doesn’t it,” I said, tying to be agreeable.
He pointed again. “People.”
I nodded again. “Sure, and they really are moving!”
He looked at me puzzled like I’d just given him a physics formula to solve. “Red light,” he said.
“Green light!” I followed with because, well you know that game we all played as kids, red light, green light, duh, right?
Wrong! This didn’t sit well with him and he gave me a look, like I was the dumb one. “No, it really is red, see?” Then he got tired of the subject and asked me if my favorite food was ice cream.
“Not really, is it yours?”
“No,” he said, shaking that beautiful, empty head. And then—thank god, I remember thinking at the time, he stuck his hand down the back of my pants and started rubbing my butt. Not caressed, I mean he rubbed it like he was trying to erase it or something. But it still got me horny, way more than trying to converse with him had been doing. So I slid even closer to him, pressed my mouth against his. He just kept rubbing and intermittently squeezing my butt cheeks almost rhythmically, like he was doing it to the Stones — “Let it Bleed” was on the eight-track.
“Wow,” I told him, “you must really be into ass.”
He shrugged, said, “It’s OK.”
At some point I realized I was going to have to take the bull by the horns, so to speak. Girls didn’t do much of that in those days, you may recall. Sexually liberated, yes, but generally that still meant letting the guy initiate every move. Why that was I’m not really sure; maybe so in the end it would seem like they did it to us, and we could pretend for them we were for the most part still virginal, even though all of us agreed virginity was an affliction to rid ourselves of as soon as possible? But the butt-rubbing thing had become an irritant, action was required.
I flipped over on my back, unzipped my pants, pulled Ray on top of me then reached into his jeans and grabbed him. There, I thought, even if he’s dumb as a post he’ll get that hint. It was at that point Steven pulled off the road, into the parking lot in front of Makapu’u beach, which immediately distracted Ray from the task at hand. “Waves!” he cried, pointing out the window.
“Oh for chrissake!” I muttered. “Red light,” I said, zipping up my pants.
•
There was no second date with Ray, even though he called me a few times and you begged me to double-date whenever we saw each other, which was less often now that it was mid-April. May was graduation. In my case that meant not only practicing our marching, but also two afternoons a week we had to stay after school for senior singing. Someone had the brilliant idea that our class song should be “To Dream the Impossible Dream,” and the choirmaster was determined that he would elicit the impossible from us, insisting it sound beautiful.
Two weeks before graduation you called me, crying so hard on the phone I could barely make out your words. You said you needed my help, would I please come over to your house? I said I’d be right over but you said no—it had to be when your parents weren’t there. They’ll be going out to dinner, you told me.
I was on your doorstep at 6:00. You flung open the door, your eyes red from crying and your voice hoarse. “Jesus,” I said, “what’s wrong?”
You peered around as if your parents could somehow have snuck back inside even though their car was gone. “I’m pregnant,” you said.
“Shit! Steven that fuck, I thought you said he always used a condom?”
You shook your head and led me into your bedroom. “He didn’t have a condom one time?” I asked you. The pig! I was thinking.
You collapsed on your bed and pulled my arm down to sit next to you. “It’s not Steven’s,” you whispered.
I raised my eyebrows at that. “Wow,” I said. “So…?”
You were silent at first, like you didn’t want to say, and suddenly I knew. “Oh my god, don’t tell me, did you … Ray?” You burst into more tears, covered your face in your hands, shoulders shaking. “Jesus, Katori, I know he looks good but god, he’s a retard! No wait,” I said, “that was insensitive. He’s a total imbecile!”
“You have to help me!” you wailed, grabbing my arm again. “Steven can’t know and neither can my parents. God, they’d kill me! I’m supposed to be the perfect little virginal Japanese daughter. I have an appointment with the abortionist on Thursday after school, can you please, please take me there and drive me home? Also I need to borrow some money, please! He charges $250 in cash.”
“Holy crap, where do I find $250 bucks? You should get fuck-wad Ray to pay!”
You shook your head. “He wants it, the baby. He wants to marry me and keep it.”
“The dude thinks trees walk around on their own accord and he wants to duplicate that gene-pool?”
You sobbed harder at this and I threw my arms around your shoulders, held you tight. “I’m sorry, that was raw. I’ll see what I can scrounge up. How much do you have?”
“Fifty dollars, my last month’s allowances.”
I sighed. “Great, there goes the $100 my grandma gave me for graduation. I’ll hit up our women’s lib friends for the rest, put their money where their mouths are. You sure you can trust this doctor? Didn’t you say your mom knew him in Tokyo?”
You nodded. “He’d never tell her or anyone he’s doing abortions. He could go to prison! And I never told him I’m her daughter. Besides, I don’t know of anyone else, do you?”
I shook my head. It was 1969, four years before Roe v. Wade. There wasn’t exactly an abortionist on every corner. “OK, I’ll do it. I could get busted for cutting senior singing though, dream the impossible dream, geez, Katori! We should see if he does castrations on the side for Ray.”
•
On Thursday I borrowed my mom’s Falcon station wagon per-usual for senior singing, then ditched the lines of seniors walking toward the music hall, fired up her car and drove to your school, Roosevelt. You stood on the curb in front of the field where the cheerleaders were practicing, shaking their red and yellow pom poms. Your lovely face looked drained of color when you got into the car. “I’ve been throwing up,” you told me and I handed you an empty Longs Drugs bag.
You pulled out a sheet of mimeographed paper from your purse. “New instructions for going to his office,” you said. “We have to drive up behind it, in the alley, and park somewhere out of sight. Says there’s a back stairs to walk up.”
I shook my head. Great, I was thinking, sounds promising as hell.
Walking with you up the back stairs inside the building I got a really bad feeling. They were dank and dark and smelled of pee. The one light bulb hanging on the ceiling to illuminate each step was out, no windows, so we had to clutch a greasy metal banister to guide us. We knocked on the back door, 2-A as instructed and a woman answered, “Yeah?” We looked at the paper for the next step—said to say we were here about the girl scout cookie order. You said this and the door swung open. “Jesus,” I muttered as a middle-aged local woman in a blood stained apron let us in. I stared at her. She scowled. “Which one here about cookies?” You nodded, and she pointed at a folding metal chair on the other side of the door. “Wait there!” she told me.
I grabbed your hand for a moment as she was leading you into another room. Your fingers felt clammy. “I’ll be right here if you need me!” I said loudly. You nodded.
I peered around the grimy, barren room that stunk of old food. No magazines to look at and I didn’t think to bring up my homework reading, The Metamorphosis. It was in the car but I was afraid to go down and get it. What if you called for me? Or they locked me out? What would Kafka have said about this situation?
I sat and tried to imagine what was being done to you on the other side of the wall, listening for sounds, groaning perhaps, him explaining things. We didn’t know much about abortions in those days, only that they were illegal; birth control pills weren’t widely available to underage girls without parental consent so we were stuck, and so naive. Hormones, getting high, even our rock music—so much of everything was about sex yet no one talked about the consequences, which were mainly for girls. The most a guy had to do was shell out a little money maybe, or if they decided to keep it, he could finish high school, but if the girl was pregnant she was out on her ass.
I was reflecting on this when the door opened and the woman in the blood-stained apron lead you out. You were leaning heavily on her arm and your skin was the color of chalk. “Put her to bed,” the woman told me as she handed you over. “Get plenty pads, could be a lot of bleeding,” she said. I nodded, wondering how we were going to pull this off, sneaking you into your house.
But you had that covered. Thursdays your dad taught his evening seminar and your mom went to dinner with “the girls.” As I was helping you into your bed you reached up and pulled my neck close to your face. “He did it,” you whispered hoarsely.
“What, did what?” I asked.
Your eyes went flat. “Me,” you said. “With his fingers, before….”
I almost choked on my own spit, felt for a moment like I was going to throw up. “He molested you?” I asked. Tears pooled in your eyes, then you closed them. “I have to sleep,” you said.
I told you I’d call and check on you and I did, for seven days straight. Each time your mom answered she pretended she didn’t understand me, and when your dad answered he said you weren’t feeling well and couldn’t talk. After a week went by of this it was graduation, with all our scheduled activities, teeter-totter emotions and craziness, so I didn’t check on you for a while.
Then it was summer. I came home one day from my part-time shopgirl job at McInerny’s and my mom said you’d called and left a number. I glanced at it, unfamiliar, but then I read “ask for room 303.” That’s how I knew you were in the hospital. I called immediately and your dad picked up. He told me I wasn’t allowed to see you anymore and that I shouldn’t call. He said he blamed me for leading you astray, that before we had become friends you were a nice girl and would never have gotten yourself into this situation. Your mom grabbed the phone and yelled something in Japanese, then said in her broken English that you could not have children now, was I happy with myself? Now she would have no grandchildren. Your father grabbed the phone from her and hung up. I sat there stunned. My memory is hazy here. I recall a coldness in my stomach, buzzing in my ears. I was terrified for you! What happened?
I dialed the hospital back, Queens, and asked when visiting hours were. The next morning I called in sick at my job and took the bus to the hospital. I knew your dad had to teach and your mom didn’t drive, which meant she’d wait for him to pick her up before visiting you. I’d beat them to the punch.
But when I got to room 303 you weren’t in it. I went back downstairs and asked at the front desk, “Katori Hart,” I said. The woman looked puzzled. “We have a Tori Hart,” she said, “they moved her back into Intensive Care this morning. You can visit,” she said, waving me away. Maybe when they admitted you they heard your name wrong or couldn’t spell it, I thought. Tori, bird without the little?
I learned this in Biology about birds: when a flock grows suddenly silent, then rises up as one and flies off together, it’s called a Dread. That’s how I felt as I approached Intensive Care. Like a flock of birds was rising silently from my stomach, into my throat. I could feel the dry tickle of their feathers on the roof of my mouth, and I imagined if I opened my mouth they would all fly out, shrieking.
I pushed open the door to Intensive Care, headed toward the room you were in, a nurse was just leaving your bedside. She smiled at me, told me you were sleeping and I shouldn’t wake you but I could sit beside you, pointing to a chair which I collapsed in; my legs felt suddenly weak. You appeared shrunken and pale, machines beeping behind you, one arm hooked up to an IV. “Katori!” I whispered. I held your free hand in mine. It looked veiny, like it had aged in just those few weeks, an old woman’s hand that had lived a lot more life than yours had. I sniffled and rubbed my eyes, then you woke up and stared into my eyes.
“Jesus,” I said, “What happened?”
You told me you got a terrible infection, that they had to go back in there and clean you out, that probably the instruments used for the abortion weren’t sanitized properly. You had to tell your parents, you said, because the pain and bleeding was unbearable. Your dad had the doctor arrested for performing an illegal abortion on a minor, then your parents got in a terrible fight because your dad said that fraud doctor wouldn’t have even been in Honolulu if it wasn’t for your mom. That back in Tokyo this doctor had been in love with your mom and was jealous when she married your dad. The only thing they could agree on was they wouldn’t let you see any of your old friends or boyfriend when you got well. Then you leaned into me and said something that gave me a chill—chicken-skin was what we called goosebumps in Hawai’i, like an ice cube melting down my spine. You told me your life was over.
•
That was the last time I saw you. I continued working at McInerny’s throughout the summer, a retail job I hated but I needed to save money for college. I didn’t stop thinking about you though, and sometimes I would stand so still, slumped against the wall behind the lingerie counter, remembering your bird-like laughter, a joyous trilling, how funny you could be and how much I missed you, that when suddenly I’d move my arm or yawn, a nearby customer would jump, tell me they thought I was a mannequin! I thought how you’d get a kick out of that, bored stiff, you’d say. Then I’d get sad knowing I couldn’t call you or see you; your parents were pit bulls, guarding you night and day.
Your death later that summer was a shock. My dad, reading the Honolulu Advertiser at breakfast like he always did, passed the obituary section to me, asking wasn’t this the girl who’d been my friend, lived in Nuuanu? There you were, your lovely face smiling on the page the way pictures of the dead do, like the living person is still there, inside that smile, laughing at the joke of being in the obituaries.
There wasn’t any information about what caused your death, but a couple weeks later your next door neighbor came into McInerny’s to buy a new bra and told me you’d died of an infection you picked up in the hospital. She guessed either the infection that landed you in the hospital came back, or maybe it never was entirely cured, or your poor body was so weakened from it that a secondary infection spelled your doom. She whispered it, spelled your doom, and I almost smiled, knowing you’d get a kick out of that phrase too. I left for college on the West Coast the following week and for the most part never returned—holidays a few times, a wedding, a funeral.
It bothers me that your parents didn’t put your name on your headstone, just Beloved Daughter, with the dates of your birth and death. Was that so you’d only ever be theirs, that no one else who loved you could claim you beyond who you were to your parents, their beloved daughter? Your mom was Buddhist, but she was nervous and peevish, I thought, when it came to you. Remember that evening when we were all sitting on your lanai, and a huge moth kept flying at your head like it was trying to land? You batted it away and your mom scolded you, said it was probably an ancestor, that our ancestors were always watching and sometimes they visited us on wings. “Better behave!” she said.
The doctor was convicted, but your dad managed to keep most of the details and your name out of the news, which I also found sad. As though you too were to blame, getting pregnant and seeking an abortion so your young life, with its aspirations and dreams—the impossible dream!—could thrive. I was going to tell your dad how the doctor abused you before the procedure, but he wouldn’t speak to me when I called, and I’m not sure what good it would’ve done; probably just have made your parents even more hurt, angry and grief-stricken than they already were.
Oahu Cemetery is a peaceful place, the dead rarely make noise. When I found your grave, one of those egret birds was perched on your headstone. Remember how when we were kids we called them cattle birds because we’d only seen them in the country, standing on the backs of cows? Now there are a ton of these birds, and they like standing on headstones about as much as they liked the spines of those cows. Cemetery birds. There are fairy terns now too, Manu-o-ku, beautiful white birds, urban seabirds they’re called, that fly all over Oahu. It’s said that in 1961 a pair of white terns laid an egg and raised one chick near Hanauma Bay. Now there are a ton of them and in 2007 the Manu-o-ku was designated the official bird of Honolulu. So many of our endemic honeycreepers are endangered or extinct due to habitat loss, but these white birds will lay their eggs on the ledges of buildings, in non-native trees, anywhere. Little survivor birds.
Looking up now, the sunset sky over your grave is salmon pink, and an arc of those fairy terns are flying overhead. Sailors on voyaging canoes watched these birds because even though they will fly far from land into the sea to fish, when the sun starts to go down they head home. So the sailors always knew which direction home was. Watching them now fly over your grave, it occurs to me maybe your mom was right about ancestor’s wings, and in death you became the bird she dreamed you would be—small, white, and beautiful, Manu-o-ku, soaring over the ocean into Honolulu, coming home.
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