To Paradise

I loved those walks of ours. I think you did, too. We had to stop them after you told your teacher about them—you were falling asleep in class, and your teacher asked why, and you told her it was because of our nighttime walks, and your teacher called me in to see her and I got in trouble. “He’s growing, Mr. Bingham,” she said, “he needs his sleep. You can’t be waking him up in the middle of the night to go on walks.” I felt foolish, but she was kind to me. She could have told your grandmother, but she didn’t. “I just want to spend more time with him,” I told the teacher, and she looked at me in the way that people often did, that made me realize I’d said something wrong, something queer, but finally she had nodded. “You love your son, Mr. Bingham,” she said, “and that’s a wonderful thing. But if you really love him, you’ll let him sleep.” I was embarrassed then, because of course she was right: You were just a child. I had no right to wake you and take you from your bed. The first time I did so, you were confused, but then you grew to expect it, and you would rub your eyes and yawn, but you never complained—you would put on your slippers and take my hand and follow me down the path. I never had to tell you not to tell your grandmother; you already knew not to. Later, I told Edward that I had gotten in trouble with the teacher, and why. “You dumbass,” he said, but in a way so that I knew he wasn’t mad, just frustrated. “They could’ve called Child Services and taken Kawika away for that.” “Could they have?” I asked. It was the worst thing I could imagine. “ ’Course they could’ve,” he said. “But don’t worry. When we go to Lipo-wao-nahele, you can raise Kawika however you want, and no one can say anything about it.”

What else do you remember? All I can do is remember. I can see, a little, but just light and darkness. Do you remember how we used to go to the Chinese cemetery and sit near the monkeypod tree at the top of the hill? We’d lie right on the grass, with our faces turned up to the sun. “Keep your eyes shut,” I’d tell you, but even though we did, we could still see a field of orange, little blobs of black flickering across it like flies. After I told you how vision worked, you asked me if you were seeing the back of your eye, and I told you that maybe you were. Anyway, it’s like that—I can see color and those blobs, but not much else. When they take me outdoors, though, they put sunglasses on me first. This is because, according to one of the doctors here, I should still be able to see—there’s nothing wrong with my eyes, as such, and so they need to be protected. Until recently, your grandmother used to bring pictures of you, which she’d hold in front of me, so close that the paper tickled against my nose. “Look at him, Wika,” she’d say. “Look at him. Stop this nonsense. Don’t you want to see pictures of your son?” Of course I did, and I tried, I tried hard. But I could never see more than the outline of the square of paper, maybe the dark of your hair. Or maybe it wasn’t a picture of you at all that she was showing me. Maybe it was a picture of a cat, or a mushroom. I couldn’t tell the difference. The point is that I never see everything new; everything I see I’ve seen before.