House of Many Gods Read Free

her cousin’s edge. She saw something else that day. Rosie’s walk was becoming obvious. For severalyears, she had listed slightly, as if her right foot were deprived of a natural heel. Each year the lopsided walk was more pronounced. Ben took her to a foot doctor who found nothing, but an ear specialist said her equilibrium was off. Tiny bones of her inner ear were permanently damaged.
    Ana thought of Rosie flying headfirst through a window. She thought of Ava striking Rosie’s head with an iron skillet swung like a baseball bat. Rosie’s flame-scarred hand that took away her lifeline. Ana crawled into bed and held her.
    T HOUGH FOLKS IN H ONOLULU CALLED THE W AI‘ANAE C OAST A “junk kine” life, somewhere in her early years, Ana began to see the forbidding beauty of her land. Slowly, the distant jade mountains and red valleys gained entry to her upcast eyes. The road past her house was paved, but dust lay so thick, it had always seemed a dirt road. Some days she stood on that road, hands on hips, as if barring entry to her valley, her attitude defiant even when neighbors drove by.
    She would be a big girl, strong legs, wide,
lū‘au
feet. She would never be a beauty. From her father, she had inherited wide cheekbones and slightly slanted eyes that went from green to brown, like
hapu‘u
ferns. Her hair was black and curly and if not pulled back in a braid, made her look wild, electrified. She had the brown/gold skin and full, pouting lips of a local girl, so in that sense she did not stand out. But there was something in her eyes, always probing, asking why? that made her, even young, seem formidable. What folks remarked upon most were Ana’s shoulders. Wide like a boy’s, they gave the impression of double pride.
    Some days when harsh, sobbing winds dried the membranes of throats, and left eyes gritty and raw, something would break loose inside her. Like a hunter of rain, she would run shouting up Keola Road, hair flying behind her like barbed moss. Boar-hounds—brawny warriors of the back roads—leapt alongside her like dark muscles exploding from the earth. And then the pounding of hooves, the gleaming, sweaty flanks of horses who shook their manes and galloped through meager grass beside her.
    She would pass Inez Makiki’s house where the Hawaiian flag stood waving in the wind, which meant a newborn baby. The Makikis were full-bloods and flew the original Hawaiian flag, showing a
kāhili
in front of two crossed, pointed paddles, nine red, yellow, and green stripes forthe major islands, and one to represent the entire Hawaiian archipelago. Twins ran in that family and folks were waiting for the day Inez would fly two flags.
    Ana always slowed down as she passed Uncle Pili’s house, an old bachelor who rented beds to field-workers and construction crews. “Dollah a day and suppah.” There were eight rooms, two beds to a room, his kitchen so small, the table, chairs, and Frigidaire were chained outside to trees. No phone, no TV, no indoor toilet. For twenty years Pili’s rates had stayed the same. Instead, each year he had lowered the wattage in the lightbulbs, leaving the house so dim, folks called his place The Lights-Out Inn.
    “Beds fo’ sleeping,” Pili said. “Folks like read, go library.”
    Now guests brought their own lightbulbs, and neighbors watched them flickering on as folks screwed them in, and flickering off as folks moved out. With all the in-out traffic, sometimes at dusk the house resembled a mother ship signaling her pods for the final voyage home. As she passed, Ana would wave to Uncle Pili sitting on his porch in a broken-down obstetrics chair retrieved from Angel’s Junkyard, his feet propped in the stirrups, his head thrown back, watching the day advance between his legs.
    She would huff along, passing dozens of Quonset huts on either side of the road, left over from World War II, when the military occupied the land. Families lived in them now, and some were neat and hung with