Lights of Akahele

Daphne Pierce wonders what being crushed feels like as she drives to her parent’s estate. She’s rented a blue convertible and has the top down to take in the balmy island air of Oahu. On the sides of the narrow dirt road are Coconut Palms and Moluccan albizia trees swaying gently. They remind her of brontosaurus necks and once again she thinks of being crushed. She wonders if the brain shuts down once one understands they are to be crushed. Or perhaps, one dies so quickly that there is nothing, only a glimpse of something coming, something huge—like mountains appearing from a fog. And suddenly, she sees it, the Koolau Mountain Range looming against the sheet of sky, unclothing itself from fog like many breasts erupting from gauzy lace.

She thinks of ghosts, checks her watch. They should be having lunch. She wonders who’ll be there, hopes things will be ripe with enough chaos to take her mind off Ravi and how she saw his wife kissing a man who wasn’t him—no, she won’t think of that. It isn’t her business. As she follows the tight curves of the road, she sees tiny `Apapane flitting through the trees like fireballs, can hear their angry, sensual cries. They seem to be both begging for something more and demanding it.

Her parent’s estate, Akahele, appears along the end of a curve, a dead end that leads to a cliff. To leave Akahele, one must head in a different direction which, depending on her parent’s mood or that of the ghosts; they may or may not be willing to share. Her phone is ringing and it proves to be her sister, Natalia, who has called eight times since she landed on the island, crying about the same situation that still remains a secret to Daphne. After she exits her car and takes off her shoes, she sees a man sitting out in the sun on a bamboo chair staring out at the ocean. Even from over fifty feet away she recognizes his silk robe, and the fact that he’s naked beneath it because it lies open upon his waxy white skin. He waves to her. William Blake. He appears less than a foot beside her in an instant, offers her some of his Mai tai, which she takes. From the sound of her sister on the phone she’s going to need it. Aware of this, he begins to laugh, and returns to his chair just as his wife appears in it. Daphne asks him what he’s written since her last visit. He shrugs.

Inside, lunch is being served—thick chicken sandwiches, tropical fruit salad, and great quantities of alcohol. This is an affair that takes up the entire first floor. Daphne’s Great-Great Grandfather, Adolphus, eats seriously in a corner away from everyone else. When he sees her, he makes a show of shutting his eyes until she passes because she’s chosen to wear her nose ring. Her parents are not visible and she knows that this means they are taking lunch in the hot tub. Probably naked. The main maid, a tall black woman built like a freight train, questions Daphne with her eyes as to whether she’ll have lunch with everyone else as guests appear and disappear around them. Daphne shakes her head and she nods once, returns to the counter with the other maids.

At a craps table, which has been dragged from the game house, she sees her brother Gabe playing with a group of his friends and Jimmy Hendrix, who nods to her. Daphne’s face burns. They’ve met before. With her head down for fear that someone will call out to her among the drone of voices and the nearly overwhelming existing of too many in one place, she heads up to the second floor, climbs the spiraling wooden stairs, stares at painted footprints—her child feet, Natalia’s, and Gabe’s tattooed on the beautifully battered wood. When she passes her room the door stands open and she averts her eyes for fear that she will see herself there as a little girl full of dreams, and bursting with anticipatory light. How she’d dreamed. Her walls were hung, and still are, with the images of a dozen Hollywood film queens, She’d taken singing lessons, piano lessons, dance lessons. She’d left Hawaii and moved to New Hampshire. She got a degree in business. She works at an insurance firm under a man she loves who belongs to woman who doesn’t love him as much. Daphne releases her eyes before she realizes they’ve been clenched closed, feels her palms tight, moist.

She wonders why men favor severe women. Women with hair pulled tight in buns. Women with zero body fat. She wonders how anyone can enjoy not eating. She thinks of Marilyn Monroe lifting a weight above her bed, her soft womanly form like dough ready to be turned into warm bread, into sustenance. A mother’s body, a lover’s body. Daphne’s seen her around the estate a few times, mostly among the thousands of flickering forms that surround the Light Tree in the center of the estate. Sometimes souls separate from it and wander the premises with all the physicality they’d had while alive. It takes guts. It is no surprise that the same souls that had bulls balls on earth are the same souls who detach from the pack.

Ravi’s wife is a severe woman. She’s thin in a way that looks painful and she wears the facial expression of someone ready to be disappointed. She often dresses in black. She hates New York. She graduated Summa Cum Laude. Daphne first met her at an art show for a sculptress who went by the initials IV, and who sculpted larger than life pieces of great bronze babies designed to look as if the floor consisted of quicksand. Daphne appreciated the technique and said so. The Wife only looked at her, eyes pointed, brows raised in amusement.

“I can’t stand when artists take themselves too seriously,” she’d said in her tailored black pantsuit, black heels, black hair pulled back, diamond earrings sparkling. “It isn’t brain surgery.” She sipped her red wine and frowned.

“Are we going somewhere after this?” she asked Ravi. And Daphne had felt like a clown, which is often, and which she doesn’t always mind, but did that night. She loves color, loves her huge, very blond curls that encircle her head like a halo, her natural nut brown tan, always red cheeks. She has full hips, large breasts, and a large bottom. She likes to feel like a big blond mountain. She wears perfume with undertones of vanilla and nutmeg. She likes to consider herself edible. Sustenance. She was once called a universe at a party and upon hearing this, threw back her head and laughed so hard that she drowned out the music.

But The Wife just makes her feel gaudy and fat. As she walks down the long hall, the walls on either side painted with waves below a pink sky, she is startled to discover another Hollywood princess standing outside her sister’s door, Jean Harlow. She’s never seen her at the estate before. She wears a pale yellow sundress that Daphne recognizes from her closet and a butterfly necklace. As she notices this, Jean does as well.

“You’ve got good taste,” she says, but she looks nervous. Daphne smiles at her.

“Is she okay in there?” she asks the starlet. Jean shakes her head.

“She won’t talk to me,” she says. “I keep trying to apologize and explain what happened, but…” she shrugs. As Daphne turns the knob she hears Natalia shout, “Don’t let her in!”

“It’s just me.” Daphne gently shuts the door behind her, feels awkward to be closing a door on Jean Harlow. Natalia sits on her pink bed and hugs a teddy bear whose face has worn off. Daphne sits beside her and she releases the teddy bear, clutches Daphne. Her sister is a bit of a severe woman. She is very thin, her hair is straight, her teeth are very straight, her home in North Dakota that she is selling with her husband James was kept very straight, and her posture is straight. Her breasts are small. Around her wrist is a small, delicate silver bracelet and she fingers it, shakes her head.

“You know, I really don’t why I came back here,” she says. Her eyes are red. Luckily she wears no makeup because she is crying the tears that well up as they fall again and again. The tears that seem to never end.

“It’s just,” she sniffles, “I missed home, you know? James told me we should rent a house until we sold ours, but no, I decided we should come here.” She smiles bitterly. “I was so nervous on the plane ride here. I thought he’d be so frightened of the Light Tree. He’s so cynical. Maybe I wanted to teach him a lesson?” She looks to Daphne’s breasts as if they possess an answer. Daphne is sure they do possess answers for someone, but for now, they are at a loss.

“But no,” Natalia releases Daphne to throw up her hands. “He loves it here. He hangs with the Brat Pack and a bunch of old, crusty bikers. I don’t think they’re famous,” she sighs, “and he’s fallen in love.” She forcefully points a finger towards the door.

“With that bitch!”

Tears well up in Daphne’s eyes and she hurts for her sister, all the while she bites down hard on her full lower lip to hold in laughter. Her stomach tenses and drops.

“They haven’t…you know?” she asks.

Natalia looks her square in the eye. “You better believe it.”

“What?”

“He says it shouldn’t matter since she’s dead.” Natalia spits out the word loud enough for it to echo through her pink and white room, bounce off the white faces of her dolls, and out the window to the coast. Death is sometimes a four-letter word at Akahele. Some who leave the Light Tree don’t seem to know that their lives have ended. Years ago, Gabe started a top-secret investigation agency with a few friends designed to solve cases by asking the dead. Unfortunately, it is impossible to force anyone from the Light Tree, and even when it proves successful, the witnesses—or even victims, lied or simply didn’t remember. Mainly, they lied.

“But sex is sex,” Natalia says and turns away because she knows her sister and can see the laughter attempting to chew its way out of her.

“You can act like it’s funny all you want, Daphne. I didn’t send you a plane ticket for you to come here to make fun of me like everyone else. I called you to help me. I need you now.” Natalia’s voice has dropped in pitch and Daphne understands she’s as serious as a heart attack.

“James is having an affair. He’s sleeping with someone other than me. He’s giving her his time, he’s sharing with her, holding her, loving her, especially when—” Natalia begins shaking; her chest is quaking with sobs. She whispers, “And the best part for him is that she’s a fantasy. A real life fantasy. But I need him now more than any other time.” Natalia clutches her middle, breaks down, and doesn’t cover her face because Daphne is here and she knows her sister.

“Nat,” Daphne says, because she doesn’t know what else to say. Her laugh dies, giving strength to her tears and they fall to her cheeks. She pulls her sister close enough to smell her Chanel and her all natural shampoo. “Oh Nat. I’m sorry.” Jean pushes the door open and Daphne can see her in the dimness of the hallway, her white hair like fire, eyes brimming, catching the gold sunset as it comes through the open window.

“I’m sorry,” she mouths at Daphne who looks away from her.

Daphne doesn’t see her parents until dinnertime, which everyone takes outside on blankets to watch the stars. Although Light Tree is miles away on the estate property, Daphne fancies that she can see it, can smell its hot, heady saltiness that is like the moist interior of a woman, yet sweeter than everything, brighter than everything. Her father, Joe, is naked with own father, Joe, and the two swing aimlessly at glow-in-the dark golf balls while, at the only table set up, Adolphus sits glowering at the two of them. Her Hawaiian Great-Great Grandmother, ‘Ainakea, is here too, sitting on a knit blanket, and when she sees Daphne, she grins. Daphne’s mother sits near her and jumps up.

Dressed in a bright yellow silk dress, gold bells, and bare feet, she squeezes Daphne so hard that she feels her heartbeat beneath her narrow chest. Somehow, she feels too thin, too frail to Daphne, which overwhelms her so she clutches at her mother, squeezes her back, wishes she could give her more of her own flesh, make her as big as the ocean beneath the cliff, as big as a planet, and forever spinning.

Although Natalia has been home for weeks now, her mother hugs her just the same. Kisses both girls over and over again.

“When did you get here?” her mother demands.

Daphne exaggerates fear, “a few hours ago.”

“What?!”

“I know, I know. I didn’t want to disturb you and dad.”

“There’s no such thing!” Although her mother is slender and dark haired, Daphne discern the same sense of overwhelming in her, the same something that always seems ready to burst from her chest, which unlike her mothers, looks it. In the distance among the crowd, Daphne sees an elderly Mexican man pick up a guitar and begin to play. Standing nearby to enjoy his music, she spots Jean and James holding hands. She’s seen Ravi and The Wife hold hands, although such a woman seems too stiff for such an action. At an office friends and family picnic, they’d held hands and even slow danced together while Daphne danced alone and watched them from the corner of her eye, although she soon found herself surrounded by other people as if they were planets being drawn into orbit around her. But Ravi never noticed her pull. He and The Wife were lost in each other, a black hole that led somewhere no one else could go.

“Did you eat?” her mother asks, bouncing Daphne’s hair.

“I did,” she replies.

“Get more!” her mother demands. “You too, Natalia.” She pointed towards the dozens of maids standing on the expansive porch roasting, mixing, cutting, and conversing. “Then come back and see me. I like the fat ones.” She kisses Natalia again very hard. In the crisp starlight, her tear streaks were still visible.

“Don’t you worry about that man,” she says tenderly. “Those boys will be boys. Soon that girl will be gone, and he’ll know.” Her mother puts up her arms to the sky. “Laugh at him! He’s the fool!” she shrieks, and then chuckles. Near her, guests laugh as well though Daphne can’t imagine why. Those who live, visitors from neighboring estates, can’t possibly know why, and the ghosts can’t possibly find it funny. She wonders why some boys won’t be boys. Ravi won’t be a boy, which she knows. He can’t be seduced.

A lump swells in her throat and her inner thigh moistens as she sees his dark eyes, closed mouth smile. His hands and neck are scarred from the trials of his youth and he’s taller than most. But then she sees The Wife, a woman so unlike herself. She sees her on that Friday afternoon a day into Ravi’s business trip to New York that she yearned to go on but couldn’t, being pulled close by a man with blonde hair and wide shoulders— the kind that every man secretly, and correctly, thinks can steal his wife. The man wore a suit as they walked hand in hand among the rain of fall leaves. Daphne realized then that this was the kind of man such a woman should have. Not Ravi. No, he is for her. Should be for her. She is designed with many rooms for him to get lost in and doesn’t he love puzzles?

She and Natalia are given sticky wet cubes of mango from the maids and walk hand in hand among the crowd. A young boy runs in circles near them with a plastic drum.

“I’m an elephant!” he shouts. “I’m shooting out water with my trunk.” And he beats the drum. In a corner, Daphne sees Gabe holding a deep conversation with her father’s younger brother, Jed. Jed is not dead, although he claims to have been once. He lives on the property and spends hours watching action films, which he then claims are stories taken from his own life. As they near, Daphne can hear that he is once again explaining how he is God.

Suddenly, she freezes, turns to her sister.

“You’re pregnant.”

Natalia doesn’t answer, smiles a painful, lovely smile. They walk to the edge of the cliff and sit down. The waves are gentle tonight as they stroke the boulders below. When she and Daphne were girls, they both fell in love with a dead boy who didn’t speak and had no name. They met him when the sun went down, as he stood silhouetted against the water. His clothes were ragged, eyes haunted and bruised. His feet were bare and raw as if he’d walked a great distance. He’d never seen running water before and Natalia and Daphne bathed him as if he were a child. His eyes had been closed with bliss at the warm water and it was then that Daphne felt the first stirrings of her womanhood. She’d dabbed again and again at his brow, as her skin grew warm, tingled in places she didn’t know existed.

She and Natalia fed him thick stew, tropical fruit, and chocolate during the day. At night, they mixed hot milk and cinnamon to help him sleep. He always ate hungrily, drinking down pitchers and pitchers of water. And he let them touch him—his hands, his back, his chest, his hair. For weeks, they were two curious girls, drunk on the newness of it all, the discovery of masculinity’s mystery, a forbidden nectar that was so freely given.

But then he seemed to become especially drawn to Daphne. He followed her around the estate and slept in her bed. She tried to get him to speak, but he wouldn’t. Tried to teach him to write, but he could only manage weak scribbles. She played piano for him, showed him her favorite movies and acted out scenes for him, but he only seemed confused. She read him Arabian Nights and Peter Pan; all the while Natalia ignored her and worked at turning the neighboring girls and the daughters of the maids against her. But then, one night outside, with a heavy crowd, Natalia danced for their parents and twirled her baton. The no-named boy was suddenly drawn to her.

Daphne had been jealous before, but she’d never felt as consumed by it as she did that summer. She went through great lengths to avoid Natalia, as she was made ill by the sight of her sister. It seemed somehow that Natalia grew even more beautiful during this time, a terrible sleek opposite beauty of the expansive blondness that Daphne was ripening into. On the nineteenth of July, she turned thirteen and Natalia presented her with a box that morning before promptly walking away. Daphne opened it and was at first greatly annoyed to discover what she thought was emptiness. But then she saw the message written inside in Natalia’s round print: I don’t care about him. I want you back. In the corner of the box was an illustration of something bulbous and strange. Below it, Natalia wrote: This is half of my heart. I drew it from one of daddy’s books. It was hard to draw.

A few weeks later, the no-named boy floated away during a warm rain and both girls saw him off. He carried Peter Pan and Natalia’s favorite red baton with him. Daphne had cooked for him so that he could be fed wherever he went, but he accidentally dropped the bowl. The whole time he drifted away into the sky, he reached for it.

“What do I do?” Natalia asks now as they stare out into the night. Daphne thinks of the Light Tree alone in the woods, undiscovered until her Great-great grandfather was lured by ‘Ainakea to take a chance and settle far away from his home in Virginia. Thought of how it was so much more than the other trees, so full of something, something more, something unspeakable in its greatness. And what would have happened here on this property if no one had brought the touch of a human hand to its bark, awakening its secrets? Daphne sees Ravi’s hands, thinks she can taste the fingertips, can feel them against her skin as she opens up to him to release what? Death? Life? Nothing at all? What if she tells him what she saw? Will he come running into her light? The sun is bright where he comes from and Daphne realizes, suddenly, that maybe he’s tired of it. He would rather be sucked into his black hole, soothed with its coolness. Daphne can never give such a thing, nor would she choose to.

Daphne decides that she knows nothing of the blonde man. She kisses her sister’s hand, touches her still concave tummy.

“You’ll give what she can’t.” Daphne says to her sister and also, inside, to The Wife. She sees the stars through eyes blurred with tears. Far away are planets, and she imagines she can feel their pull. Farther away, on this planet, she imagines there’s a man somewhere who feels the pull of something he can’t explain, something that seems to promise satisfaction for his emptiness. Something like the sun, but sweeter, softer. Sustenance.