Ke Mea o Pule Aku

Of dust she knows nothing. Lehua balks in the face of faith. Her conversations with God go something like this:

Blessed be the Father, the Son, and the Holy Unknown

Wholly unknown to me, your quaking orphan

Give us this day justice for the blood spilled in your name

The courage of a people popped like sunflower seeds between the teeth of the Holy righteous

The splitting of sacred land felt as an ache in our limbs our arms

Raised high in praise of you like we were taught to do

With hope that you hear our weeping, our outcry of dispossession and rage

And if you would please smite the conquerors who stitched our worship behind our lips

I would really appreciate it

Thanks and all

Amen

For all that Lehua rails against the foreign God singing in her veins, she knows no other. The gods of her people, the gods of Earth and Sky and Sea, of Fire, Beast, and War, are nothing to her but names uttered against the receding shadow of a history overwritten.

So she clings to what divinity she has, the only God whose worship she’s ever tasted upon her colonized tongue.

She was christened Moshe and baptized, quietly, before she even opened her eyes. It is only in the secret of her kupuna, her elders’ shaking breaths, that Lehua takes shape like a sanctified melody.

In her heart that red blossom unfolds to nourish the small I’iwi of her yearning, that soft and simple plea to feel her roots going deep as she knows they must. Her want is the flutter of a bird’s wings.

Yet, of dust, she knows nothing. The stars that compose her, the orchestra of heaven that led a nation to consecrated volcanic ground, fill her ears with only hollow silence. She might, if she concentrates, hear Pacific drums echoing from the far beyond. Most days, she accepts it’s only the beating of her broken heart.

She cradles the curve of her belly. The hopeful flutter of new life pushes against her from inside. When he is baptized, the shape of the air around him will be David - giant slayer, divinely-chosen king of God’s divinely-chosen men. Privately, in the depth of Lehua’s soul, he will be Kahokuokanaloa, star of the sea god, god of deep shadow and looming death. For that is what his fate will be, born under the heel of an empire - death of spirit, death of inheritance, death of self. He, like Lehua, will not know who he is.

The pain of it sets her trembling. Though yet unborn, Kanaloa feels her sorrow. He kicks his displeasure against her ribs.

Lehua flinches. Palms what she hopes are soothing circles against the tight swell of her stomach. She bows her head and fights every displaced atom of her body to push past the One God and reach for the exalted of her ancestors.

Her prayer for Kanaloa is this: that when he is born, he will raise the wrath of water and drown the unbelonging in the vengeance of his slaughtered story.

Lehua carries him nine months and seven days. Her screams as she expels him from the safety of her nurturing womb would move the gods to bitter sighing, had they known to listen. As it is, she reaches for the One God to deliver her from suffering.

When they deliver her tiny god into her heavy arms, stillborn and so perfectly beautiful in his blood and grime, Lehua has no tears left to call forth from her grief. The loss is too much a betrayal, too soul and bone and sinew deep for the mere process of chemical emotion.

She holds Kanaloa against her heart seven minutes sweetly aching before he, too, is lost to the mystery of dust.

Supplications uttered in church are only a rote moving of her lips. A meaningless exhalation, yet she grapples with the need, the desperation to believe. If there is no great power gently guiding the life of man, if no maestro lovingly playing out the swell and the softness of souls, what is left? The cold chasm of mortality. A deep, endless, dreamless sleep, to which passion, desire, and the whole medley of humanity goes without purpose.

Lehua can barely bear her want.

Lord our Father who knows beginning and end and all between

Master of moments and memory

Son of sons and Brother of the despairing destitute

Wrap me in your merciful redemption

Take the yoke of Being from my breath in worship

Accept my devotion as sacrifice, my Isaac upon the altar

Bless the bold decay of my body as you bless the decay of innocence and -

Her bitterness belies her. She excuses herself. Steps lightly down the aisles past the pews of repentant, hope absent, arms empty.

Ezekiel watches her, bear observing cub. He has a need to fulfill her every need. He prays with her, lies with her, lies for her. Father of her unlife, he bathes her in his unshed tears.

Ezekiel lost him, too - their David. Their Kanaloa. Ezekiel held him, too, a span of a moment gone too soon.

Lehua hates him and his pain, hates him and his sympathy. Nine months and seven days she shared her body with Kanaloa. Nine months and seven days she formed him of her own flesh, her own sacred blood. She felt him jump and sigh, kick and cry, felt the second all was still and sickening, the third second, the minute. Her body had the power and magic to create, yet her soul had no power to save. How can Ezekiel understand that?

Kanaloa was more than the vain hope of a future. He was a promise from the gods, a promise from God to heal the wrong. He was, Lehua understood, more than she deserved.

Ezekiel, too, knows nothing of dust. For this he has only her disdain.

She leaves him one night, without warning and without argument. She reads in his posture that he knows he is not what she needs. She reads in the tightening of his parting arms around her that she is not what he needs, either.

The Mo’o on her grandparents’ screened window chirps a lonesome song. Gecko, like the sound it makes. Gecko. Gecko. Gecko. Echo of a heartbeat that never was. Small, solitary, crawling thing. Tiny and innocuous as it is, Mo’o still manages to draw shrieks of horror and disgust from strange mouths.

Lehua almost understands him, would wrap him in her arms if she could, lost child sweetly found in mother’s love.

Yet he is a guardian in his own right, sleepless sentinel of homes. He is, in his way, a god. Who is Lehua to comfort, to pity a god?

Instead, she thanks him for his thankless service.

Mo’o defender of my mother’s mother, protector of mothers before them

I see you, I cherish you

Tangible memory that you are

Green with quiet jealousy for your people’s affections

May we turn our ear to you, o Mo’o

May our eyes ever behold your glory and light with reverence

With songs of joyous praise

Pastor Mizono will sound the cry of heathen. Her multitude of aunts and uncles and cousins will dress in black to audibly mourn the death of her grace.

It will be superfluous mourning. Whatever spark of grace Lehua felt of the Lamb, whatever wishful whisper, passed to nothing with the nevermore of Kanaloa.

Mothers were ever to carry the memory of children near and far and gone away, but Lehua feels nothing, knows nothing. She has not even the sound of his weeping to lead her to him. No imprint of baby face on her soul.

She marvels at the soul, at what must be the eternal impermanence of it, and wonders if to pin it down is to capture the whole unknowable essence of God.

“What do you think, Mo’o?” Lehua asks.

Mo’o doesn’t answer.

She flicks him off the screen.

“What do you think of Maui?” Jeanie asks. Her hapa friend.

They float, limbs outstretched, lazy in the incoming tide.

“S’alright,” says Lehua. “A little touristy. So, horrible, maybe.” She pauses, considers. “Definitely awful.”

“I mean,” says Jeanie, “the god. Demigod. Whatever.”

Maui, who ripped the islands harshly from their sleep in the ocean’s grasp. Maui, who trapped the sun for his mother.

“Good man,” Lehua answers. “Good son.”

Must be gnashing his teeth in such fierce agony. Strange ghosts haunt his land. Possessive, impatient poltergeists defile his rich body with their insatiable want. Here this trinket, there this resort. There this seaside salt-water pool. No more families tenderly tending their inheritance of land. No more loving hands massaging the earth.

“I’m thinking of finding him,” Jeanie says.

Passing thought. Whimsical murmur, offhand. The hard finality of it welcomes no dissenting opinion.

“Okay,” says Lehua. “So you find him. What will you ask him?”

“No questions, really. Just wanna tell him what’s new. What’s been going on.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you think he’ll say?”

Jeanie sinks her body beneath blazing blue. Legs first, tucked, then torso, arms, head. Emerges a dolphin breaching shallow swells. Droplets stick to her freckled face. Dark hair, slick and glimmering in the low sun, paints her neck and shoulders like ink. A soft nose she has, miniature mountain buttoned above heartbreaking lips and below softer eyes. Olive eyes, not quite green, but glowing emerald in the dusk light. It’s Greek ancestry wedded to Hawaiian, maybe, that sculpts the delicate points of her cheeks, the small curves of her shoulders so fine a work of art. Poems could be written about her. Namakoakahai. Persephone of the sea.

“Something wonderful,” Jeanie answers. “Something profound.”

Little Jeanie. Bronze-carved, Honu-blessed Jeanie. Her words move in Lehua like a hymn.

Lehua knows the belly-ache of straddling two worlds. She is prince-turned-shepherd. She is not. She is flowering evergreen. She is not. Somewhere between forty years in exile and perpetual blooming, she waits. She hopes. She prays. Maybe she will cross the river Jordan. Maybe she won’t. Maybe her longing is all she will ever have.

“I don’t know, Jeanie,” Lehua says. “I think you’re mad.”

“We have to stop feeling hopeless sometime. It’s bad for survival. We need to save what we can.”

Lehua is not floating anymore. She is falling. Cool sand catches her small toes. What is there that’s left to save?

Despair does not become her. With effort, she splits a sunburned grin. Thinks, at first, it’s genuine. Realizes she is only mirroring Jeanie. Grin tugs to scowl.

“Find him, then,” Lehua dismisses. “You can tell him it’s all gone to shit.”

“That’s not true, Moshe. That’s just not true.”

It is Lehua’s turn to sink, and so she does. Her scream expels a silent storm of bubbles drifting up. Her eyes open to the salt, and she sees him: Mano gliding gallantly by. He is large, sleek with glowing stripes. He brushes her, and his skin is rough against her skin. She should fear the jaws, the teeth upon teeth upon teeth recounting history, but the peace that bathes her is absolute. Baptism by the child of Kanaloa himself.

When she emerges, spitting water bitter as tears, Jeanie is gone. In her place, a turtle drifting idly by.

Her quest for Maui begins with an old woman selling papaya. A dollar each for the little ones, three for the bigger ones. Lehua spoons at the yellow flesh, captivated by the pool of juice that pushes up.

“These,” croaks the woman who will soon be dust, “come from a magic tree. She has been here centuries. She will be centuries more.”

She is earthen, this little old woman. She carries the sharp tang of ginger and the heady wash of plumeria.

“What is her magic?” Lehua asks.

The old woman leans in, bearer of a sweet and heavy secret.

“She is of the bones of kings,” she whispers into the space between them. “Her fingers stretch to heaven, seducing Wakea, calling down eternal life. Whisper your wish to her, and she will guide the way.”

“What price?” Lehua asks. There is always a price.

The old woman shakes her head. She is, apparently, baffled.

“Life eternal,” she replies. “Isn’t that price enough?”

Lehua, drenched in the humidity of thick heat, is seized with unnameable cold.

She presses three dollars into the old woman’s hand and shuffles desperately away. Pauses just down the road. Drops both halves of her papaya to one side, untasted.

It is not for her to contemplate the eternity of life. How can she? Once, maybe, before her aching loss. Now, it would be too cruel. She wraps arms around her hollow belly. Her lips press together. She thinks she may finally cry. As before, no tears come.

A flitting at the corner of her eye catches her attention. Flash of tiny red, speck fluttering against the mountain green bursting with all manner of trees. She looks up to see her. I’iwi.

Curved beak and black wings like a fringe, I’iwi dances her heart through the foliage. Lehua scrambles up the small cliff at her side, gripping roots, gripping rock, following her. She has never seen I’iwi before. She has never been this deep in the sweep of rainforest that nurtures her island.

Lehua follows, deeper and deeper, deeper and deeper. The way is rough, strewn with stopping plants underfoot and slipping rocks, leaves and branches unknown to her scratching her legs and arms, slapping her face. She moves fast as she can, running, swatting, hopping. For a dreaded moment, Lehua thinks she will lose her.

I’iwi pauses just ahead to hop from one branch to another. Back, forth. Back, forth. Waiting. Lehua stops. Steps forward. I’iwi moves a span away. Another step. Another span. Once more. Lehua crouches down. I’iwi waits.

Lehua sucks in a green breath. The faithful in her wants to believe it’s a sign. The cynic stays her mind.

I’iwi chirps a sweet sound and hops along her chosen branch. It’s Lehua’s namesake, plain to the eye, red needles of its blossoms stretching up and outward like the fingers of a lover begging their beloved not to go.

I’iwi hops to one such blossom. Plunges her beak into his pleading heart.

Lehua watches, awe-struck. She feels, she is sure, a touch of the divine. Not the divinity of a believer mourning Christ on the cross, but something deeper. Something feral. She presses palms to soil, hallowed ground. The soft, damp, dark of it folds beneath her hands. There is a tightening behind her eyes as the world erupts into sharp focus.

E komo mai, I’iwi, into the deep of me

The soft, slow wrath of me

I feed you hopeful sorrow

I’iwi moves, each wing flap slow and deliberate to Lehua’s sudden Sight. From tree to tree, from blossom to sweet fruit, Lehua tracks I’iwi’s flight.

High up in the branches, reclining there in the branches, there is a little man. Round-bellied, toddler-sized, the smallest little man.

Lehua’s English tongue is clumsy around her whisper. Menehune. Imp, elf, servant, messenger, guardian of the land. Menehune.

The Menehune glances at her, teeth biting through papaya, through hard skin and all. Lehua has never felt so nakedly seen. She sees herself through his eyes, gangly and large, lost in the borders of her own body.

Lehua steps to the papaya tree, rests hand against smooth bark. It is the ripple of water beneath her trailing fingers, cool and soft. Life eternal, unsoiled by the dust of man.

“You seek,” greets the Menehune. His voice is compassion with a hard edge of temptation. “What do you seek?”

“Maui,” her meek reply. Humble, a croak in her throat.

“Maui,” repeats the Menehune. “Why?”

“I don’t know.”

The Menehune jumps lightly from the tree. He rises only to Lehua’s knee. The shell of the half-eaten papaya drops to her feet.

“You don’t know,” the Menehune mocks. “What would Maui want with you?”

Again, “I don’t know.”

“Have some papaya,” says the Menehune.

Lehua shakes her head.

“Have some papaya,” he insists. “Eat from the Tree of Life.”

He does not speak her language, Lehua realizes, but she understands him all the same.

She replies, “A’ole.”

The Menehune smirks. “Your heart is in your tongue.”

“My tongue was ripped from me before I was born.”

“So it was. Eat, and remember.”

She has already refused what Hina gave her. Not an old woman at all, but goddess. Mother of the sought for, patron of all.

Aloud, Lehua says, “She tricked me.”

The dread of near-immortality creeps through her yet again. Life eternal, sold to her for three dollars by the roadside. The careless cruelty of it stills her blood.

“No trick, Moshe,” says the Menehune. “She chose you.”

“I didn’t agree to that.”

“No one chosen ever does.”

The Menehune touches her leg, carefully, softly, gently. He asks again, “Why do you seek Maui?”

“I want to thank him,” Lehua says. “I want to kill him.”

“A sacrifice,” the Menehune ventures, “to the One God.”

Tears prickle Lehua’s eyes, hot and insistent. “Yes,” she says, and she knows it to be true. “Yes.”

The Menehune nods his knowing. He does not seem worried. Lehua’s heart pounds.

Blood mixed with blood mixed with blood. Is this not what the One God desires? How to appease Him, if not with the violent disavowal of her love?

“I will take you to Maui,” the Menehune says at last.

From air he takes a blade of tooth, carved, serrated along both edges and large as a grown man’s palm.

“From the mouth of Kamohoalii,” the Menehune explains. He offers her the dagger. “You may use this to spill Maui’s heart.”

Lehua looks at the weapon askance. It’s a trick. It must be. Hina, who certainly set her on this path, would never allow the ritual slaughtering of her child.

But Lehua will not show her hesitation. Not before the gods. Not before God or anyone else. Resolute, she grasps the blade by its handle. It is firm and light in her grip. She turns it in the dappled light, marvels at the intricate lines and curves carved into lethal bone. Her fingers glance the sharp edges and prick there, blood blooming. Red smears on white. There is a draining deep within her, a sharp tug from inside that kicks her breath from her lungs.

“Treat it with care,” the Menehune warns, too late. “It was made to kill a god.”

Lehua presses her lips and tucks the blade into her belt. It sits restlessly there, a throbbing, vicious heat. To her ear, it sings.

Guide me, Kamohoalii

To Maui’s doom

The Menehune turns from her and traipses, unweighted by worry or care, into an untamed world.

Maui is not what she wants and not who she expects.

He sits there, a boy fourteen or fifteen, pounding poi in a halved gourd. His eyes are black beneath blacker bangs, wide and welcoming, fresh and bright as of a fawn. His shoulders are not yet the breadth of sky, his arms thin and hard and not like the bearers of line and hook that pulled land from the deep.

Still there is no mistaking him. Infinity radiates from his crooked grin.

He is charcoal delicately swept over a rough page. He is sun-kissed. Tatau mark him from brow to toe. He gleams with pride in his unclothed body, fully regaling in the tapestry of the long story belying his youth.

Lehua sits across from him, Kamohoalii’s tooth lying naked on her lap. Her fingers where she cut them throb.

Maui the child betrays his duality through the task at hand. Carefully and precisely he rolls stone over clumping taro. Wildly and irreverently he pounds it down.

Lehua can only sit still in the hush of the place, Hala leaves draping over them, around them, twisting into a nest. He, the chirping chick. She, the starved serpent. He neither shivers nor quakes in the face of her fangs.

Maui sets down his poi-smeared stone and lifts the gourd. Dips his tongue into it, trailing a line through faded purple mush.

Lehua has not been invited to speak. Lehua has not been invited to Be. The Menehune is long gone, else she would grip his tiny hand for support. Instead, she clenches her fist around the handle of the blade until her knuckles scream.

Still, Maui says nothing. He only watches her, curious. He only watches her, waiting.

Lehua lifts the hand holding the blade. Crouches, shuffles forward to raise it high. Maui smiles. When she plunges the dagger beneath his throat, there where his heart resounds, when she feels blade slipping through flesh and muscle and bone, fire engulfs her inside out. Blood, sharp, cloying, metallic blood, assails her breathing.

Maui grins through his dying. Red-rimmed teeth, red streams trickling down his chin, he grins through his dying. He wraps paling fingers around hand gripping hilt. Murmurs what might be condemnation, what might be blessing. Lehua is screaming too harsh in agony to know the difference.

A child. A child. A child.

Child torn from mother, divinity slipping through his veins and watering the Hala-bearing earth.

Lehua feels his passing like she felt the unbeing of Kanaloa. He sits upright still, grins still, but the light in his dark eyes has gone away. From Nowhere, from Nowhen, he stares through her, into her, beyond her.

Hear me, Trinity, and take this, my last offering

Bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh he unmade me

Unmake me in your image

For I want nothing of you

In the depth of her sobbing, her tears finally, finally pouring forth into the world, she does not wholly feel the quickening in her womb. Soft face forms, nose and eyes and baby hands, toes and fingers and baby heart, baby tongue and baby breath. Her body guides Him into the unknowable, the honey-sweet toil and triumph of Being. She is Hina moulding Maui to save her people at last. He will guide them, through his lifeblood Maui will guide them, he will bless them on and on and on into the far future.

She knows, now, something of the dust that made her. She is Moshe of the One. She is Lehua, birthed of the gods.

In both worlds, she lives. Forever and forever, she lives.