HAWAI‘I CALLS EXCERPT
Prologue
Sadira
Alice and Daddy were gone. It took three men with handkerchiefs tied around their faces to manage the stretchers and the opening and closing of the doors, the “how to” of navigating the stairs, the “turn a smidgen left, now lower it slightly, good, you’ve got it, you’re clear now.” First Daddy and then Alice. My mother Elma watched from the sides, as silent as Daddy and Alice, not quarreling with the men as I wished she would, not telling them to wait, that surely if they only waited Daddy would waken. I could feel him still there in the house. Not Alice. She was gone. I’d felt the chill of her departure as I washed her body and combed her hair. At Elma’s direction, I dressed her in her Sunday best and laced her boots tight. Elma saw to Daddy, placing him in his black suit, his favorite silk tie around his neck.
When Alice was out the door, the last man to leave removed the black sash hanging beneath the Quarantine sign. We had no more bodies in need of collection.
Once the men were gone and the front door was shut and locked again, we stripped the mattresses, washed the bedding in scalding water from the stove, and scrubbed down every object, doorknob and frame. Only when we had scoured the floors and bathed ourselves did Elma say, “That is enough for now. I need to rest. Go eat. Sleep if you can.”
I left her curled on the bed she and Daddy had shared, the fresh linens and quilts pulled up to her chin, the scrubbed shades pulled down to the sill. “I’m sorry,” I whispered as I closed her door, knowing she couldn’t hear me, but needing to say the words. It should have been me not Alice. Alice was the quiet, obedient one.
I was her opposite, the bane of Elma’s existence, the child who at six, declared she hated mommies and from then on called her mother Elma. “A savage in need of taming” was how Father Cridge put it when I refused to say the Apostle’s Creed and walked out of confirmation class. “Only twelve and she’s already willful and outspoken,” he told Elma and Daddy the evening he called at our house.
Once Cridge was out the door, Daddy declared him a man in need of a brain, a soul, and a heart and never entered the church again. Elma chose to rise above. She suffered the congregation’s glances and whispers and did what she could to mend me. And now, despite her solid Christian living, Elma had lost the two easy loves of her life and was left with only me.
As Elma slept, I sat at the kitchen table, my face to the fading afternoon light. I closed my eyes and rested in it, my feet planted on the floor, my arms flat on the table. The hall clock ticked away the seconds, steady as a heartbeat grounding me in the room, reminding me I was warm and alive. I waited for the thing that came next. Surely there would be tears. I would feel suddenly and forever shattered or perhaps it would be more like a piercing, an arrow to the heart, a lance in the side. Something would wander into the room and lead me into grief. I welcomed that grief, wanted its release. But nothing happened except the fading of the light, the sun sinking behind the roofline of the Baxter’s house next door, and the onset of hunger. Beside me on the table were cookies and cake and fresh bread. In the icebox, a platter of chicken, a bowl of shelled peas. All of it from my grandparents.
The day before, Grandad had dropped off a bounty of prepared foods and produce from their farm. He’d risked violating the quarantine, snuck in the back kitchen door so the neighbors wouldn’t see, even hauled in a giant block of fresh ice for the icebox. We watched from the hallway.
“Thank you,” Elma said and he nodded.
The sadness hung so heavy on him he couldn’t speak, could only unload first the ice, then the milk and the eggs, the platters of food.
“Any improvement?” he finally asked, his arms empty, his hand on the doorknob, his son upstairs near death.
Elma shook her head. “I don’t expect they’ll make it through the night.”
Grandad nodded, said no word of protest, simply left. I hated her for killing his hope.
She started a flame beneath the kettle on the stove. “We should make ginger and lemon tea with lots of sugar. They need liquids and nourishment.” She filled a large pitcher at the sink and handed it to me. “You can start bathing Alice with cool cloths. We need to get their fevers down.”
For the rest of that day and all of the night we sat vigil, setting cool compresses on their faces and chests, lifting their heads so they could sip teas and broths, lifting them to sitting when the coughing fits came, until finally there was nothing more we could do except prepare them for the mortician’s men.
When the kitchen finally darkened, I lit a lamp and made a plate of chicken and potato salad, along with a large slice of Grannie’s apple pie, thick with fruit. I ate slowly, though I was hungry. All urgency had dissolved.
This is how it is to be alone, I thought. This is how it is to sit in the dark with no one to say a word of comfort. I bit into a piece of chicken, and felt Daddy’s hand on my shoulder. I set down the food, wanting no distraction from his presence. I wanted to sense Alice as well, but she was nowhere, not outside on the swing, not asleep on the floor beside the cat.
I did not lean back into Daddy for warmth, though the day’s heat rose and drifted away, for I knew he hadn’t that to give me.
I picked up my piece of chicken, realizing that at least for Grannie and Grandad, Alice and Daddy were still alive. They must be notified, word must be sent to them and all the family, but for that moment and a while longer they were spared the knowing.
“How can you be so heartless?” I’d said to Elma when she sent Grandad off in despair. I’d held my fists tight at my side so I wouldn’t bash them into the walls or sweep the glass lamp off its table. In her usual calm, matter-of-fact voice, she answered, “Like it or not, life will wound you, Sadira. You might as well learn that now. The only choice you have is how you respond when it does. You can let it defeat you or you can face it straight on and keep going.”
I finished my supper, washed up my dishes, and then lamp in hand, I climbed the dark stairwell. Daddy didn’t follow.