Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl is of Hawaiian/Sāmoan ancestry and raised in both Hawai‘i and American Sāmoa. She is a Honolulu playwright and author. Her plays have been produced in Hawai‘i and the continental United States, and have toured to Britain, Asia and the Pacific. Her anthology, Hawai‘i Nei: Island Plays, and her mystery novel, Murder Casts a Shadow, were published by the University of Hawai‘i Press. In 1994, she received the prestigious Hawai‘i Award for Literature and, in 2006, the Elliot Cades Award for Literature.
We perform our last rites in
this circle of stones
built by our grandmother
all around she
planted these trees
that are not from here whose
perfumed flowers we have named
and now include in
all of our rituals today
we bury our beloved
aunt not of our blood family
by marriage a papālagi
born to the islands with
no other place
she called home.
This is not
a pre-packaged funeral
family digs her grave
family bathes and dresses
her body
writes her life
in one hundred words
or less
raises a tent
sets up chairs while
swelter in the heat
with pelu and clippers
wrenching flower
after flower from the bush
in the middle of the day
you shouldn’t work like this
my father scolds
and I’m so grateful
it’s not him
I’m doing this for.
Then comes the day
and the last time
we take her home in
a thread of black cars
winding along the sea
today it shines and rolls
Faga‘alu, Fatu ma Futi, Matu‘u
inland past Nu‘uuli I
struggle for the names
of villages I used
to know them all then
finally up the long drive
to the circle of stones where
all of the āiga is waiting.
I try but cannot hear the man
in the black lavalava
who never knew her
his mumbling phrases from
the Bible fading
behind me is
the place her house
once stood the soil that
folded over her hands
year after year as
she fashioned an
enviable garden
from the impossible bush a
coconut tree where
she trained her
vanilla to climb and bloom
she showed me the
delicate process of pollination
all by hand she said
we make our lives.
So now I am waiting
and look above
for annunciation
I am looking
toward seamless
sky trees robed with
vines and falling flowers
when one by one they
arrive: the sega, the
ti‘otala, the scruffy mynah
even our white
lulu turns up
for this day a
host of wings descending
to the circle
they stand sharp
eyed and ready
claws on branches
a single pua
twirls toward earth as
the voice of the ‘iao
cries out the eulogy
she would
have loved.
On this ground the rocks flew
And the spears stabbed
At the blood flushing out
Heads were split by clubs
Cracking bones
Their cries at night
Sometimes you can hear them
For the ones they saw
Right before
They were cut off from
Those bodies sweating
Forever
See those mounds
Raised fortifications
They are the evidence now
They tell us who sleeps underneath
This part of the earth
This ground
Our family calls
Home.
Over the bones and sites of war
They built the houses
Where we listened as our father told
How it was before the roads and
The lights and in the villages
Where he walked in the high valleys when
Every man had a tatau
Or he sat with the women he said
The vao had so many voices
You never hear them now
And how he could swim
Across the bay it was so clear
All the way he saw his shadow on the bottom
Then our mother would kiss us goodnight
In our beds veiled in mosquito nets
As the light went out
I could see them dancing
The old ones when
The moon came full across the yard
This place didn’t need a
Sign that said
‘Ua Sā.
From this theatre of war my uncle
Coaxed up the green things which
Flowering called back the birds
To where he wrote
All those words that still
Make us weep and cry
And long for each other
Then sometimes he would
Fight with my aunt
Who said that divisions
So she madly paced and counted
And drew out all the boundary lines
I swear it was them down there
Our subterranean neighbours
They don’t wonder why
We all look haunted
They don’t wonder why
We have trouble getting along.
And then there was the time
My family brought me home
They thought it was to die
At twenty-two
Sick from the world all ready
With the taste of funereal dirt
In the back of my mouth my
Blood prepared me for burial
And I was more than willing
To give myself up
I was more than willing
To fall on this ground.
But in the fever dream
They all came calling
A formal visit
With feather-edged
Fine mats like flags
They sailed up the lawn
All the hundreds shining
They came up shining
Each one to embrace me
Each one with warrior arms
Each one bearing a meaalofa
Of love they came
Oiled
Scented
And finely dressed
For battle.