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When we’ve landed, I switch my phone from flight mode to a barrage of new texts. More of the same. I won’t let them spoil my big moment.
Stepping out of the airport into a tropical sun, I look down at my little red suitcase, the lightness of my optimism grounded by the weight of my cargo: Shona is with me all the way.
It contains all I own in the whole world and, except for Shona, I know no-one in Honolulu. The realisation is a sudden symbol of what I’ve done. Set myself adrift, just like this island, to float alone on a fathomless sea.
The feeling carries me in a daze to the end of the taxi queue, where another text from Andrew brings me down to earth with a thud.
Snap. Found your itinerary in the waste-paper basket. Careless. Or begging to be rescued?
My itinerary? But the printout is in my laptop bag. Then I remember the paper jam. I tore up that copy and buried it in the household rubbish before putting the bag out for collection.
He’s gone through the wheelie bin in the street.
“Someone’s really missing you,” says a voice at my shoulder.
Turning from my screen, I see the woman with the pearl buttons. We waved to each other over the luggage carousel and now she wants to be my confidante?
In response to my frown, she says, “I couldn’t help noticing all those messages on the plane.”
“Yeah, someone’s missing me.” My voice is a cold shower after her warmth. “Sorry to be rude. I’ve had a shock.”
Followed by another one.
The hotel reservation, did good ol’ Daddy make it for you? So easy to cancel. A little Aussie charm and a story about your broken leg. Snap! No refund, I’m afraid.
As the queue inches forward, my knees start to buckle. If I go down, I may never get up.
An arm slips through mine. “Steady, now,” the woman says. “I’m here.”
At her words, my legs find their inner strength. “I’m running away from a bad man,” I murmur.
She tightens her grip. “Good for you.”
We’ve reached the head of the queue where she opens the door of the cab and helps me inside.
The taxi takes off before I can thank her. Through the back window, we share a final wave.
My driver asks, “Where you like to go?”
With my reservation cancelled, I don’t know what to say. No refund. Honolulu is full of places to stay but I hadn’t counted on blowing my cash on five-star accommodation.
As I do battle with a mix of emotions, the taxi driver glances at me in the rear view mirror. “I drive around,” he says, “then you decide. OK?”
While I call a few hotels. “Yes. Towards the hotel strip. Thank you.”
I dial the Moana Majestic where I had my reservation but hang up before they answer. It’s the first place Andrew will look for me. The vision of his grubby search through our curb-side bin is a stark reminder of his obsession. My fingers fumble on my phone. Three hotels in a row regret they’re fully booked. My flash of determination threatens to crumble.
“Hotel strip.” My driver pulls into a drop-off bay. “December very cold on mainland. Busy time here. Tourists come to Hawaii, get warm. I wait for you. OK?”
While he idles, I race into the first lobby. In my mounting panic I barely register the parquetry floor, the rattan chairs, the potted palms. No vacancy. The hotels on either side deliver headshakes too.
When I flop onto the back seat again, the driver pulls into the traffic. “I know place. OK?”
As I let this stranger take charge of my destiny, the high-rise buildings of downtown Honolulu flash by, taking my thoughts with them. After twenty minutes, he stops outside a row of dangling red lanterns, the office towers replaced by single storeys. Open storefronts spill goods onto the pavement and pedestrians in rubber slippers push small trolleys packed with goods. The scene reminds me of my one trip to Hong Kong.
The driver turns compassionate eyes on me. “My friends got café. Here in Chinatown. Good place to think about future. You read fortune cookie. Know what to do. OK?”
Chinatown. Fortune cookies.
I find my voice. “How do you know I love Chinese food?”
He laughs. “I taxi driver. Got special powers.” Then he proves it. “You afraid of something. You stranger in town. You got no home.”
Did he channel Andrew’s message? Or I’m wearing my history on the outside like a chainmail vest.
“But most of all, you ... hungry. Tell Eugene and Suzi, Eddo send you. Must serve best noodles for you.”
Noodles. My stomach makes the decision for me.
Grinning at my cash, he deposits me and my worldly goods on the pavement. I watch him drive away, our brief connection after the help from the woman glowing inside my parched soul like a warm pebble. There are kind people here.
Feeling like a waif, I take in my surroundings. Between a vegetable market and a stall selling flowers and leis, a small café flaps a happy coat on a hanger like a flag. Inside it’s buzzing with patrons. The Pearl.
The dark interior swallows me, and the breeze from the ceiling fans caresses my hair. Even though no-one acknowledges me, there’s a welcoming vibe from the mostly Chinese patrons. Behind the counter, a skinny young woman who must be Suzi nods at the mention of Eddo’s name and indicates the menu on the wall. Ignoring the English translation, I point to some Chinese characters, enjoying the thrill of a surprise.
When I grab an empty table, my belongings take up little space at my feet. Then over a bowl of heavenly dumplings, I consider my predicament. Andrew intends to make me homeless, but there must be a YWCA in Honolulu. How long could I stay there? Long enough to set up my seminar business, start earning an income and fulfil the requirements of my green card? This will be the next huge step for me, but I push the challenges aside for now and attend to my golden rule: food first.
As I glance down at my suitcase, imagining Shona wrapped in my few belongings, little wings of freedom flutter in my chest. Then something on the floor snags my attention. A face-down leaflet. Diners have been trampling it, even leaving a bare footprint amidst the scuff marks. I pick it up and turn over the home-made advertisement.
An artist named Wanda is seeking a roommate in Waikiki: Bed to let, long-term, cheap. She’s decorated her notice with a wild and vibrant painting of a fish that fixes me with a beady eyeball. There’s no date, but on a whim I dial the number.
“Wanda Kadisha Mahala Yavenna Ziegler.”
“Wanda, the artist? Wanda who’s looking for a flatmate?”
“The same. Still looking. Can’t find the right person. What’s your accent?”
“Australian.” Then I blurt out everything. “I’ve just won a green card, walked out on a bad marriage and stepped off a plane. A cab driver dropped me at a noodle bar in Chinatown, and your leaflet was on the floor. I need a long-term bed.” When I draw breath I remember her comment. “Why can’t you find the right person?”
Her sigh is audible. “Fair question. Aside from the baggage of the applicants, I’m not everyone’s ideal roommate.” I know she’s going to explain. “I don’t eat meat and I practise hula at home, with music. The apartment is up three flights of stairs, one room with two beds plus kitchenette and bathroom – so you can’t bring home a lover and I don’t do threesomes. The place is also old, and ... the walls are covered in fish.”
Like the one on her leaflet? They’re the only thing that bothers me. A reminder of my phobia.
My phone pings with a dark photo of an interior room. I can just make out lots of fish. Everyone around here probably wears shell necklaces and has sand between their toes. I tell myself to get a grip.
“What was wrong with the other applicants?” I mentally review Andrew’s list of my shortcomings.
She laughs. “All sorts of things but mainly ... not Australian enough!”
It’s ridiculous. How can you decide on a flat from a bad photo, and bond with a new flatmate over two minutes on the phone? But it’s just happened – in spite of the fish. Now Wanda is giving me directions to the bus and promising to meet me at the stop in Waikiki.
When I’ve left the Pearl, I realise I forgot the fortune cookie. Wanda’s leaflet has predicted the next step in my future instead.
*
From the bus window, the view of office blocks quickly changes to green open spaces with lots of palms and other trees. There’s plenty of traffic, including pickups, giving the impression that Hawaiians love their cars. Buildings are mostly functional and single storey, while I marvel at the wide expanse of sky – and the few glimpses of sea. I can live here. The tension in my body eases, then builds again as I make sure I don’t miss my stop.
When the bus drops me at the corner of Kaiulani and Kuhio Avenues, a young woman steps out from the shade of a palm tree.
“Selkie?”
As Wanda throws out her hand in greeting, I crane my neck to take in her appearance. She towers over me, her long bare legs hardly covered by cut-offs, her feet clad in work-boots. Her super-short brown hair is wrapped in a lime-green sweatband. What’s not to like?
She looks down at my little red suitcase, and raises an eyebrow. “No baggage, huh? Perfect.” But when she takes it from me, she almost drops it. “Whoa. Walked out with your husband’s gold ingots or his sports trophies ... or what?”
“Long story,” I say. “You’ll see.”
Before we set off, she points to the bus stop across the road that will take me from here to the city, indicating which way to look for oncoming traffic. “But you won’t get run over here at night. Curb-crawler central.” She gives me a wink.
It’s a reminder that I’m out in the big wide world, no longer stifled – or protected – by Andrew. We walk a couple of blocks, past stylish shops at street level below apartment buildings that have seen better days. It’s that odd mixture of beachside glamour and vintage squalor found along the coastal fringe the world over.
When we reach our destination in Koa Avenue, Wanda stops at a store, its narrow aisles crammed with health food. She tells me to wait on the pavement beside a rack of store-filled bags of nuts and dried fruit, reminding me I didn’t research what Hawaiians eat. I step back to gaze up at my new home. The building has a distinctive façade of patchwork stone below open walkways on each level. The retro-style railings are draped in beach towels and used as racks to store surfboards. Can I hear the sea? I can smell it.
After a few minutes, she emerges with two bottles of wine in her shoulder bag. “Local and organic.”
“A bottle each? Do you drink like a fish to match your wall art?”
As I worry I’ve offended her, she puts one hand on her hip. “We’re celebrating. I’ve got a new roommate. We don’t want to fall down the stairs in our rush to get a second bottle before they close.”
It’s decided. She’s my kind of gal.
We should have started swigging on the way up, to make the apartment appear less humble. The front door opens straight into the living-room-cum-bedroom, with two beds on the left against opposite walls, leaving a narrow space between.
My eyes go straight to the fish, a quick calculation coming up with twenty. They fill every wall space, each one fixing me with one garish eye that bulges out of a vibrantly patterned body. They create the impression of living inside an aquarium because they’re not flat paintings as I expected.
She sees me staring, and I hope the mix of horror and wonder isn’t showing on my face.
“Resin,” she says. “I make the moulds from dead fish, paint the resin when it’s dry. Each one’s a signed original. I have a stall at the Swap Meet. Let me know if you get attached to one and it’s yours.” While I struggle to say something positive, she adds, “They pay the rent.”
My wild sense of freedom falters like a wounded bird. I’ll have to pay rent too.
In two strides, Wanda has reached the tiny kitchen. “My job: open the wine. Your job: show me what the hell you’ve stashed in that suitcase. The rock you’ve murdered your man with?” She throws her head back and laughs. “The cops won’t find you here.”
Death by Shona. That would have been fitting but I’m laughing too. The practical costs of freedom can wait till tomorrow.
When I open my suitcase and explain that Shona gets her name from the Shona people of Zimbabwe and their long tradition as stone carvers, Wanda abandons the wine to caress her knobbly hair. “Cool. In all meanings of the word.”
She clears a space for Shona on the shelf above my bed and we toast her arrival in Waikiki. Then she introduces us to the shop dummy she found at the side of the road earlier today.
“Meet Doris. It means ‘gift’. I named her after the Greek goddess of fishing grounds, like these walls. When I carried her over my shoulder, she earned us a few looks. People around here throw out lots of useful stuff.” She points to a shelf full of found objects, including a Buddha head with four faces. “I have plans for Doris, now that she doesn’t have to stand in for a roommate.”
I’ll ask her about the rent after we’ve had more wine.
“Where’s she going to sleep?” My suitcase has claimed my bed.
“Here.” She plonks Doris on a stool at the end of her bed, with her legs jutting out into the doorway to the kitchen.
“She doesn’t have a head,” I say.
“You noticed that. And your Shona is all head. Symbiosis in action, like the team in The Wizard of Oz. Shona has wisdom, Doris has ... street cred. Just as I upended her onto her own two feet on the sidewalk, you rang.”
“Your leaflet helped.” But wasn’t I thinking about Shona when I found it?
“Where did you say you picked it up?”
“A noodle house in Chinatown. The Pearl. It must have fallen from their corkboard, then got trampled underfoot.”
“Why do you say that?”
“It’s covered in footprints. I’ll show you.” I rummage in my tote bag but can’t find it.
“Footprints.” She says the word as if it’s significant. “Chinatown.” Her eyes have gone dreamy.
“What’s wrong?”
“Not wrong. Weird. I didn’t put any leaflets up in Chinatown. Only around Waikiki. Your leaflet must have ... walked.” She laughs. “That’s probably why you can’t find it.”
The conversation is taking a spooky turn and I don’t want to do spooky. Time to change the subject. “About the rent?”