To Paradise

When you returned, it was night. I was still lying where I had fallen. The pork, left on the counter, had spoiled as well, and in the glow of the lamp, I could see little gnats swarming above it.

You sat down beside me, and I leaned against your warm, bare skin. “Da,” you said, and I struggled to sit up. “Here, let me help you,” you said, and put your arm behind me and helped me sit. You gave me a glass of water. “I’m going to make something to eat,” you said, and I heard you throw the pork into the garbage can, and then begin chopping vegetables.

You made us two plates of stir-fried vegetables with rice, and we both ate them right there, sitting on the kitchen floor.

“I’m sorry, Da,” you said, eventually, and I nodded, my mouth too full to answer. “I get so frustrated with you sometimes,” you continued, and I nodded again. “Da, can’t you look at me?” you asked, and I lifted my head and tried to find your eyes, and you took my head between your palms and brought it close to your face. “Here I am,” you whispered. “Do you see me now?” And I nodded once more.

“Don’t nod, speak,” you instructed, but your voice was gentle.

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I see you.”

I slept indoors that night, in your room, in your bed: Edward wasn’t around to tell me I couldn’t, and you were going to go night fishing. “What about when you come back?” I asked, and you said you’d just climb in next to me, and we’d sleep side by side, like we used to in our tent. “Come on,” you said, “take the bed,” and although I should have argued with you, I did. But you never came to join me, to keep me company, and the next day, you were quiet and distant, the joy of the previous morning disappeared.

That weekend was the last time I ever saw you. Two weeks later, I was sitting on the tarp and waiting for you when Uncle William drove up, and when he got out of the car, his arms and hands were empty. He explained that you couldn’t come this weekend, that you had a school function, something you couldn’t miss. “Oh,” I said, “will he come next weekend?” And Uncle William nodded, slowly. “I should think so,” he said. But you didn’t, and this time Uncle William didn’t come to tell me, and it wasn’t until another month that he arrived again, this time with food and supplies, and a message: You weren’t returning to Lipo-wao-nahele, not ever. “Try to see it his way, Wika,” he’d said, almost pleadingly. “Kawika’s growing up, son—he wants to be with his friends and classmates. This is too hard a place for a young man to be.” It was as if he was expecting me to argue, but I couldn’t, because everything he said was true. And I knew what he meant, too: It wasn’t that Lipo-wao-nahele itself was too difficult a place to be; the difficult part was being with me, the person I had become—or perhaps always had been.

A lot of people think they’ve wasted their lives. When I was in college on the mainland, it had snowed one night, and the following day, classes were canceled. My dorm room overlooked a steep hill that led to a pond, and I stood at my window and watched as my classmates spent the afternoon sledding and tobogganing, sliding down the hill before slogging back up, laughing and holding on to one another in exaggerated exhaustion. It was evening before they returned to the dorm, and through my door, I could hear them talking about the day they’d had. “What have I done?” I heard one boy groan, in mock despair. “I had a Greek paper to write for tomorrow! I’m wasting my life!”

They all laughed, because it was absurd—he wasn’t wasting his life. He would go on to write the Greek paper, and then pass the class, and then graduate, and years later, when he was seeing his own son off to college, he’d say, “Have fun, but not too much,” and he would tell him the story of when he was in college, and the day he’d wasted sledding in the snow. But there’d be no real suspense to the story, because they would both know the ending already.

I, however, had wasted my life. Aside from you, the only thing I had ever accomplished was not leaving Lipo-wao-nahele. But not doing something is not the same as doing something. I had wasted my life, but you weren’t going to let me waste yours as well. So I was proud of you for leaving me behind, for doing what I was unable to do—you wouldn’t let yourself be seduced or fooled or spellbound; you would leave, and not just leave me, and Lipo-wao-nahele, but you would leave everything else as welclass="underline" the island, the state, history, who you were meant to be, who you might have been. You would discard it all, and when you had, you would find yourself so light that when you stepped into the ocean, your footfall wouldn’t even sink but would instead skim atop the surface of the water: There you’d begin walking, east, toward a different life, one where no one knew who you were, not even yourself.