Kalihi
Hear the blood hush, then rush, the thud of it coming along my knuckles. Cracked knuckles, swollen knuckles, bloody knuckles. Bloody knuckles used to hit and hurt, not because I wanted to but because my brother made me. This was New Year’s, Black Cat Crackers up and down the cul-de-sac, pop pop pop, whole families in green plastic chairs in their driveways, sidewalks smooched with char and red shreds of paper. The fireworks were going and Skyler and James went behind the garage to play Bloody Knuckles with Dean, and since Dean went, I went, and since I went, Kaui went.
Years already I’d been trying to understand what was inside me, while the rest of the world was trying to tear it out. Especially my brother sometimes. This was one of those nights where he hated me.
Skyler, James, both of them hapa Japanese, tall and round stinking teenagers. James with his braces, glittering and spitty. Skyler with his floppy hair and cheekfields of pimples. Both with their prep-style clothes, all Polo and Abercrombie. And there was my brother with his jaw-length twizzles of hair, baggy Billabongs and too-small Locals Only T-shirt, surfer-dark skin and pursed thick lips. So obvious we didn’t belong, but Dean was always trying to trade up: him and Skyler and James, their knuckles already blistered with blood, laughing and shaking the pain out of their hands.
“Miracle boy’s turn,” James said through his braces, nodding at me.
“Fully,” Skyler agreed, “I think so, yeah, Dean?”
All night my brother had been one-upping them both, James and Skyler. My brother running faster, swearing dirtier, the only one quick enough to cockroach a beer from the adults’ cooler. So cool, all for James and Skyler, since their families had glossy SUVs and heavy dark furniture in their high-ceiling houses, everything Dean wanted to be. But how could he get there, I bet he wondered, besides getting rich boys close enough that maybe he could absorb some of whatever they were that we weren’t.
And me and my brother both knew I was the only one that had done anything for us anyway, because of the sharks, what came after. We’d been on the news and in the papers and every time Mom and Dad had been talking about how poor we were. So then we were getting donation checks and clothing drives and even free food some places, from everyone that had seen and heard the stories Mom and Dad kept telling, how I was lucky to survive the attack but we were so broke that groceries and rent and bills were going to kill us instead.
And even after the letters and donations, things didn’t stop. I talked about the sharks in my Kahena Academy application, the selection committee had probably heard of me, too. So I got into the best prep school in the state—a full scholarship, the same as it was for all Native Hawaiians—even if the school was full of kids far beyond what James and Skyler were.
And my family, especially Dean, could see all the other things happening to me, that I was getting smarter, quickly, that it might as well be magic how my brain was vaulting me past my classmates. And the ‘ukulele, too—the songs I could play—He’s some kind of prodigy, the teachers were saying, and Mom and Dad like the sun when teachers talked about me. They’d started to say I was something special. Even right where Dean and Kaui could hear.
All that happening and my brother here with James and Skyler, then me. They all knew what they’d heard.
“So what, Dean,” Skyler said, “I get a turn with him or what?”
Dean stared at me, started to smile, but I swear underneath I saw a flinch, maybe he didn’t want it to go all the way, he was still after all my brother. But then the grin spread. “Everyone gotta take a turn, Noa,” he said.
Illegal aerials—the type of red and blue and gold explosions only hotels were supposed to launch—boomed in the black above us, tossing our shadows against the stucco walls of Skyler’s mansion.
“You’ve got a hundred pounds on me, easy,” I said to Skyler. Like that would help, like anything would help.
“No be like that,” James said. “Fairy.”
“Get some bloody knuckles,” Skyler said, stepping closer, punching hand still twitching. He aimed it at me, made a fist, the clench was slow and stiff and I could see the flaps of skin on his knucklebones, the bits of blood. Around the corner came the murmur of the party, the sparkling crash of beer bottles piling up, then the firecrackers, pop pop pop.
“Cut it out,” Kaui said, her voice smaller than all of us, she actually put her hands on her hips. We all froze, every boy, we’d forgotten about her, standing at my side, little sister three years under me.
I looked at Dean again, I wish I hadn’t; it shames me now to remember it. How I was thinking he might still step in, say it was a joke, of course a teenager with the body of a man shouldn’t be pounding on a middle-schooler.
“Come on, mahu,” Skyler said to me. “What, first time punching? Hold your hand up.”
I raised my fist. Dean leaned back lazy on the wall, crossed his arms.
Kaui said, “Noa, don’t.”
“Go away,” I said to her. “It’s between us.”
Skyler put his fist up. Six inches from mine. Our knuckles: his already chewed with punches, mine all smooth and thin, even I saw the ending. Then Skyler moved to punch me; I flinched. “No flinching,” he said, punched my shoulder with his other fist, soon there would be a bruise like the day after immunization. “We gotta go again,” he said.
So we did, set our fists in the air facing each other. I tried to make my wrist lock, tried to think of what I could be that wouldn’t break or bend, statue or train or rock wall, but then he punched into my knuckles. There was a bony slapping sound.
Pain shot to my elbow, I yelped, Skyler hooted. “Gotta go one more time if you cry like that, pussy.”
I looked at Dean again, but he made like he was only watching the fireworks, burning in the air above.
“He not gonna save you,” James said. “It’s big-boy time, sack up, bitch.”
My teeth were clenching so hard my whole jaw was a balloon of hurt, something like my knuckles were, don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry. “All you retards can do is punch,” I said. “You’ll be praying for McDonald’s jobs while I’m graduating from Kahena.”
James’s feet shifted in the grass, I heard the hiss and crackle. “You guys hear this smart-ass?” James said to Skyler. “Maybe we both get a turn for the second round.”
“No,” Skyler said. “Only me.”
My hand was shaking then, all my fingers and my palm whumping with my pulse, but I closed the fingers, felt the pain stretch and burn across my bones. I put my fist six inches from Skyler’s again. He punched, harder, like a heavy door slamming closed, my hand still in the doorjamb. An explosion in my hand bones so big it blew through my eyes, everything white for a second, I fell back on my ass in the dirt. When I landed I made an awful wet crying sound, like a puppy.
James and Skyler both laughing, Skyler flapping his punching hand, and out front on the lawn someone must have told a good joke, because all the adults were laughing, right at the same time.
Kaui moved in front of me. “Cut it out, botos,” she said.
“What?” James laughed again. “Wait, what?”
“I said enough,” Kaui said.
“Maybe it’s your turn, then, yeah?” James said to her. “You and me.”
Dean stood up from his lean. “James, no be stupid,” he said, his pidgin dialed up since he wasn’t with Mom and Dad.
“Do it,” Kaui said to James.
“Both of you shut up,” Dean said.
“Too late,” Kaui said. Then to James, “Do it, scaredy cat.”
“Watch your mouth,” James said.
“You gonna watch it for me?” Kaui said, all ten years old of her. “Do it, pussy.” She put her fist out, just as mine had been, her hand so much smaller and rounder, there almost weren’t any knuckles.
James set his fist in the air, six inches from hers.
Kaui’s face like something carved from koa, little brown sister, bushy hair pigtailed. I didn’t know what to say—part of me wanted her to try it, because she was always thinking she could keep up with me and Dean, even though she was five years younger than him and three years younger than me, she should know her place … and then part of me didn’t want her to try it, because I knew the only way it could feel when it was over.
“Kaui,” Dean said.
“Do it,” Kaui said to James. She kept her fist out.
James shrugged, locked his arm, pointed his fist at hers. He twitched a fake at Kaui, she didn’t flinch. He shifted his weight and threw a punch from his shoulder, but when his fist met hers it wasn’t a fist, he opened his hand and grabbed her wrist, laughed. Patted her hand. “Come on, I not going hit a girl, specially not Dean’s sister.”
Dean laughed, too, he knew he had won, James and Skyler liked him enough, probably because of what he let them do to me. I chose it, I wanted to say. I matter, not you. But the three of them shifted their positions, just a bit closer to each other, me and Kaui outside their loose circle.
“Go,” Dean said, waving us away like bees at a picnic. They were all three laughing. I turned, I walked away through the trimmed bright grass, I heard Skyler’s voice, dimming—“I got some fireworks,” he said—and then I was out of earshot.
“I hate that stupid game,” came Kaui’s voice next to me, and I jumped a little.
“I didn’t know you were there,” I said.
“Well, I am,” Kaui said.
“You shouldn’t have come back there,” I said.
“Why not?”
If there was one thing Dean and I agreed on, it was that no one got to hurt Kaui but us. That was what it meant to be her brothers, but I knew what Kaui would say if I explained it that way, so I didn’t. Instead I said, “You got off lucky, they didn’t hit you. It used to be like that for me, too.”
We’d made it back to the sidewalk, two houses down, Uncle Royce’s party. Skyler and his family would have hated it here—which is why they’d gone to another party up the street the other way—people here were just in jeans and T-shirts, camo board shorts, the tarry smell of cigarettes, no decorations, beer in cans from half-gutted cardboard boxes. Then another rolling pop of firecrackers.
“If you’re tired of everyone picking on you, maybe don’t be such a smart-ass all the time,” Kaui said.
“You know,” I said, “just because you learned a few swear words, that doesn’t make you grown-up.”
“Whatever,” she said. “Bet they’d still be wrecking you if I didn’t step in.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I said.
“Things like that with Dean,” she said, “it’s almost like you want to get beat up.”
She was right, that’s exactly what it was, but how could I tell her? She didn’t know, no one knew, how after the sharks I could feel Mom and Dad holding their breath so hard it was almost like they were holding mine, they talked about the ‘aumakua, how me having been blessed by the spirits, chosen, meant something. Already I was lucky for them, had brought them things, the donations they got from my story that made our move to O‘ahu so much easier, certificates and awards from Kahena Academy, shaka respect from every local that heard the shark story and felt the old gods in it, everything, it was me.
Dean saw it. And he heard, too, from Mom and Dad, could I be the new Hawaiian scientist, or some senator, or the whole renaissance. We all heard, and there were things growing in me that made me believe I could turn into those dreams.
Still I shrugged at what Kaui said. “He’s always mad at me. I figure maybe if I just let him get in a few good lickens he’ll get over it.”
She snorted. “Dean’s not so good at that.”
“At what?”
“Getting over things.”
Then there was an awful whimper, a human sound you just know is bad, me and Kaui both stopped talking. We saw Dean, dark skin shirtless, walking slow toward us on the sidewalk from behind Skyler’s house; Skyler was with him, their shoulders bumping. My brother had used his shirt to wrap Skyler’s hand and now cradled it. I noticed a new, black smell, almost like after firecrackers, burned paper, but more sweet and smoky, grilled pig maybe. And Skyler had his eyes clamped shut, tears squeezing out in between, him whimpering, my brother telling him that everything was going to be all right, James behind them looking sick.
All the parents and the party shut up.
Dean said, “He tried to let go but the fuse was too short.” Skyler was shivering like a horse coming up out of a river.
Dean whispered something to Skyler, Skyler shook his head. But anyway Dean started to pull the cloth back and showed us something like a hand, three fingers that wiggled white, two others that didn’t, there were yellow chunks and shreds of skin, then splinters of bone gone gray in the light. The sweet pork smell blew again across our noses. People hissed and turned away.
Then voices came up again, loud and urgent, someone’s keys jingling, while I stepped forward and touched Skyler’s hand, I didn’t know what I was doing, even Dean asked me that, What are you doing, but I didn’t answer because there was too much in me to speak: I felt the prickly growth of the grass in the lawns all around, as if it was my skin, the beat of the night-bird wings as if I was the one flying, the creaking suck of the trees breathing in the firework air as if the leaves were my own lungs, the drum of the hearts of everyone at the party.
I touched Skyler’s hand, my fingers traced the splinters of bone and shreds of skin. And in the space between our hands, something pulled, like magnets, and there was a warmth. But Skyler’s dad arrived, pushed me back, and closed the shirt over his son’s hand—it was better already, I swear, the skin closing back, the bones stitching themselves, I saw it was better—and suddenly my head felt fizzy, filled with helium, like after running too fast for too long. I stepped away, I tried to lean against the folding table with the mac salad and musubi, but my hand missed the tabletop, touched only air, I ended up on the ground, on my ass, for the second time that night.
From there I watched as two fathers took Skyler into a truck, the square sound of the doors closing, the chatter and roar of the engine starting, and, somewhere more distant, pop pop pop.
Kaui nudging my shoulder. “Wake up,” she said, and she said it again and again until I did. Who knew how long it had been. “What did you do?”
I wanted to say, but my eyelids were heavy, trying to make my mouth muscles open was like trying to open a refrigerator with a slug. I didn’t know what I had done, exactly. Only that there was a feeling from Skyler’s hand, a feeling of wanting to correct itself, and I was part of that feeling, made it larger, if only for a minute.
Dean arrived, looking down on us. “We gotta go.”
I could see something burning there behind his eyes. Scared and angry and shamed. This was when it really started, wasn’t it. “Sorry,” I said, hoping that would be enough, this time, and I think I was also saying it for everything since the sharks had first saved me.
“Sorry for what,” he said. “Not like you was the one grabbing a firework you couldn’t handle.”
I shrugged. “I know. But still.”
“But what, you thought you was going fix his hand or something, when you touched it?” Dean smirked and shook his head. “You didn’t do nothing.”
Mom and Dad were calling to us from across the street. “We gotta go,” Dean said.
We got in our dented blue Jeep Cherokee, me and Kaui and Dean in the back, Mom driving us home because Dad was four beers deep and, he said, didn’t want us to see him fondle a cop to get out of a DUI. His palm on Mom’s thigh and her fingers laced between. Headlights going past us the other way as we came down from Aiea, Dean looking out his side window and every now and then taking deep blowing breaths, all the signs and buildings along the H1. He looked even older, just since we’d got in the car, and I bet I did, too. Neither of us like the Dean and Noa from Big Island, before the sharks: I remembered us sprinting through Hapuna Beach big-wave advisories, surf booming to our knees, then our chests, we’d dive right under the foaming whitewater. We’d feel the rip pull us sideways along the beach, see who could get deeper under each wave, let the sucking current of the coming set drag us along, the grains of sand gathering and bouncing over our spines, and we’d feel the water start to bend and stand up, tugging on our board shorts, and when the wave crested and tossed its full force directly on top of us, we’d push deep and open our eyes and grin at the yawning curl of gold sand and blue ocean that couldn’t touch us. Underwater Dean’s eyes were as I think mine were, squinted with joy, and the air rushed from our noses and mouths in silver ropes as we swam back toward the surface, where we’d high-five at our bravery, at what we could beat. Now we were in the Jeep, coming home, Kaui in between us, both boys and our Bloody Knuckles hands, driving toward whatever would come next, while part of me kept checking the rearview mirror for what we were leaving behind.