GRASSY LAKE, FLORIDA
Over spring break, the family drives to Grassy Lake. It’s the little sister of Lake Placid, Florida—residential, gaping blue. On the lakeshore, wooden cabins with screened-in porches slam their doors in a smashed, metallic symphony as children run in and out, in and out, to the water.
My mother is here. She’s stuck here with Tao, her brothers, and her parents. Her parents speak to each other less and less these days—her father, with his newspaper, his tiny sailboat, his heavy glasses of scotch, and her mother, in the sun, oiled arms wrapped around her knees, watching dragonflies dipping O’s in the water like smoke rings. My mother is just beginning to notice this disconnect, her two parents as people, two people who are very different, indeed.
Let’s move to my mother in her room, in the full-length mirror, tying the frayed strings of a bikini top around her neck. She ties it so tight the knot digs. Her breasts are growing—they need more support—but she hasn’t mentioned this to anyone; right now, her body is still a secret. Today, she’ll sail with her father on his two-person Sailfish, but she feels different this year, his co-captain, the same bathing suit—awkward, even. She pulls her bikini bottom up, up, trying to find a smoother spot near her waistline. Her body is changing—womanly, she thinks—but she does not know what to do with these new twists of muscle, these new hips.
She walks out of her room, back into the patio, and takes a breath before opening the door. She feels the heat of the screen on her palm, pressing, walking out of it, my new body, the door slamming behind her in a crack.
How many times do I have to remind you about that damn door? says her father, as he pulls ropes through the grass toward the boat. Both he and Mei Mei take a look at their daughter, their hiapo girl, copper in the sun, like a woman. Her father squints. Her mother slides bulky, square sunglasses down her nose.
Punahele, you been eating all my sweets? asks her father. Look at that ‘ōpū on those skinny bones.
I’m just changing, says my mother. She folds her arms over her stomach.
No more poi for you, I guess, says my grandma, winking. She knows how much my mother hates poi, the gray sludge of Hawaiian not-quite-dessert. You look fine, she says.
Kulikuli, says my mother in three hard blinks. She marches back into the patio, pushing the door for an extra slam.
That evening, in the shower, my mother decides to move someplace up north after graduation. She wants a place with a pale, chalky sky and winters that hurt, a place where she can wear giant knit sweaters every day, the fabric loose and her body unrecognizable, every last sweep of her skin protected.
SPRING, 2016
PETERBOROUGH, NH; MANCHESTER, VT; VOORHEESVILLE, NY
My mother flies to New Hampshire to pick me up. Her hair is burned around the ears, curled where it has never been curly. She has a new cough from staying in the house too long. She refused to leave without our dogs.
We drive through Vermont and stay the night. On the hotel television, the news reports that new evidence has emerged against O. J. Simpson—they’ve found a knife on the premises. Another channel tells us about a new JonBenét docuseries.
Here we go again, says my mother.
You ever feel like history just keeps repeating itself? Never stops circling?
The next morning, we drive to Hannah’s house. I am happy to see her home, which is not burned but upright, sturdy, warm. I am happy to lie in her bed; I am happy to smell her hair, her sweaters. Mostly, I am happy to see Hannah, who has been writing me letters, checking in. In the corner of the room, she’s organized my things. Socks, pillows, stacks of books, the Christmas gifts. It’s all still here.
Let’s do those DNA tests, I tell Hannah. Her mother bought her one, too.
Do what? asks my mother.
This spit test, I say. You send it in the mail, and this company supposedly breaks down your ancestry, I say. That family tree I’ve been planning on.
Why would you want to do all that? my mother closes the book on her lap.
Hannah and I open the kits. We spit into the plastic tubes. I make puckering faces as I try to produce enough saliva to fill to the line, not too many bubbles. We watch the liquid settle. I punch in a blue gel to activate the test, shake the tube. I place it back in the prestamped box. Hand it over.
Later that night, in bed, Hannah asks me about the past few months. New Hampshire. The dreams about my father. My drinking. My health.
You ever sit in the car, or in a window seat on the subway, and the car or train next to you starts to move? And you think you’re the one moving? And you’d swear by it? And sometimes, in your stomach, you can even feel it?
That. I say. That’s what life’s like now.
SPRING, 1976
HOLLYWOOD, FLORIDA
The call comes in the middle of the night, though Peter Gelbwaks is still at work. He’s been working all hours lately, selling insurance to pay off the medical bills for the daughter who never came home. Osteogenesis imperfecta. Her name, he and his wife told The Attorney, was supposed to be Dana. Hear the phone ringing. See Sharon Gelbwaks, twenty-six years old, asleep in her bed, alone.
Hello? she picks up. Peter?
It’s The Attorney.
I’ve a question for you, he says. And answer honestly.
Sharon is just beginning to make out the voice, its familiarity, the person on the other end of line, when The Attorney says, If I were to tell you I found a baby, but it’s biracial, would you still be interested?
Yes, she says. Of course I would. Of course we would.
Do you want to ask your husband?
Sharon pauses. Could they? Could they really provide a life for this baby—Jewish parents, a Jewish sister—in which this child would feel comfortable? Understood? Would the child be taunted? Would she know how to cut the child’s hair?
She thinks back to their last meeting with The Attorney, 150 applications slapped down on the desk, ahead of them. This girl is young, said The Attorney. No prenatal care; she found out too late to do anything about it. By the look of her, I can tell how she got herself into trouble.
Our daughter Dana had a place in our house, a bassinet, said Sharon. I spent my whole pregnancy making this bassinet, every day I did, and then I guess I never really had to make it.
We’re good people, Peter had said. Every bone in our daughter’s body was broken.
Sharon grips the phone harder. Peter says of course, she lies.
Well, that’s good news, says The Attorney. Because no other applicant was interested. If you meet me at my office tomorrow, we’ll get to signing some papers.
Congratulations, he says, and, Goodnight.
In ancient Hawaiian folklore, the worst fate to befall someone is for their spirit, or ‘uhane, to be abandoned. Spirits should be visited, cared for, returned to, nurtured. Any spirit should be treated as one’s family.
Hawaiians are told to check for the presence of ‘uhane by peering into bowls of water or lacing a trail of leaves on the ground. A human will tear the leaves with their own weight or show up, reflected, in the water. A spirit will not.
Forgotten spirits are called Kuewa. They are left to chew on mothballs, to haunt, forever, the empty dark. Sometimes, if truly angered, these forgotten spirits will visit the places they once knew, and relive their histories.
Huaka‘i pō—this is the term I was taught—Marchers of the Night.
SUMMER, 1997
SEVEN DEVILS, NORTH CAROLINA