Austin Aslan - The Islands at the End of the World

Eventually, though, my thoughts catch up with my battered body.

Panic claws at me, loneliness. A black hole. I’m plummeting, tumbling. I tuck my face into my hands and weep, flooded with all of the fear I didn’t have time to let in till now.

Forget all of it; it doesn’t matter . But it’s not even over yet. This labyrinth is real, and I’m somewhere near the center. I just want to be in Mom’s arms. My feet press into the floor with enough power to budge the Earth. When will it let up? When is enough enough?

The world that worked is gone, but I’m still here. Anguish washes over me.

An older man sits beside me. He coaxes me into his gentle arms and holds me tight. I could never explain how, but I instantly feel his kindness. I weep against his chest.

I wipe my face against my sleeve and look at him. He is Hawaiian, with a potbelly, a round nose, and deeply pocked, ruddy cheeks. He has careworn, coffee-colored eyes, and the thickest mane of wavy black hair I’ve ever seen on a man his age. He looks nothing like Grandpa, but he reminds me of him. “Thank you.”

“How are you?” He hands me some tissue.

I shrug and blow my nose. “Better.”

“You guys are going to be okay now, yeah?”

I nod.

“Your dad’s getting patched up. He’s doing good.”

“Are you a doctor?” I ask.

“I’m a healer.”

We sit beside each other comfortably.

“Are those stitches under that bandage?”

“Yes.”

“Good. No scar gonna tarnish that beautiful young face.”

I laugh. “Do I look like I spend much time in front of the mirror anymore?”

His smile widens. “You and your dad on your way to Hilo, yeah?”

He must have been around when I was answering questions. I nod.

“Crazy out there, yeah?”

I nod again.

“I love the Big Island. Wish Moloka`i had mountains like that. Mauna Kea’s, what, fourteen thousand feet high?”

“Yeah. Think so.”

“All those telescopes and radio dishes.” He looks at me intently, trying to connect without coming on too strong. It dawns on me that I’ve been hugging a complete stranger.

“Would you like to be alone?” he asks.

“No, that’s all right,” I say quickly. I can feel the panic even now.

“I’ll stay.” We sit together in silence.

“Your name is Leilani?”

“Yes.”

“One of my very favorite names. I love the sound, I love the meaning.”

“Thank you.”

“Have you had any fits?” He points to my bracelet. “Since all this started?”

The sudden question and the word “fits” throw me for a loop. Such a casual term to hear from a stranger. “A few.” I cover my wrist.

“I’m an epileptic,” he says. “No shame with me.”

I look up and study his eyes. His honesty shows. “I’m running out of meds,” I say. “Do you have any?”

“For epilepsy? Not here.”

I slump.

“Maybe it’s an opportunity, Leilani. Especially now, yeah? Everything’s changed.”

“An opportunity ? No offense, but no thanks.” I pause. “What’s your name?”

“Akoni. But I go by Uncle.”

“Uncle?” A Hawaiian title bestowed upon respected elders. “Are you from here?”

“I’ve been on Moloka`i awhile,” he says. “Maybe I was one of St. Damien’s misfits. Who knows, eh?”

“Leprosy?”

“I never had the disease. I came to minister long after segregation ended.” Akoni plucks at my bracelet, as if he’s read my mind. “Our disease—leprosy of the mind, I used to think. Helped me fit in. Helped me belong.”

“Helped you ‘fit’ in,” I joke.

His high-pitched chuckle bounces out of his belly and makes me smile. “Exactly.” We settle into another silence. Akoni’s expression grows penetrating, and he asks, “Have you heard them?” This appears to be a difficult question.

“Who?”

He continues to study me. Finally, his expression lightens. “The nurses, I mean.”

“No.”

“Hey,” he says, “no worries. Do you want to get settled in while you wait for your dad?”

“Settled in?”

“Come on.” He rises. “I’ll show you around. Your bags will be waiting at the camp. Then we’ll come right back.”

Another refugee camp?

I follow Uncle Akoni outside to the sidewalk back toward the beach. We turn the corner and he leads me several blocks through a small town bursting with purpose. Everyone seems to be immersed in some task. A pear-shaped haole man, an obvious stranger to hard labor in his previous life, pushes a wheelbarrow full of sand up the sidewalk. A trio of Asian women hoist sloshing pails of fresh water across an intersection. Hawaiian carpenters assemble underneath the awning of a shop, tool belts sagging from their waists. Two Hawaiians march toward the shore with long fishing poles balanced in their fists. Nobody is suppressing them, overseeing them. No military police patrols with weapons ready; no barbed wire; no elderly people sick and dying on their moldy cots, forgotten in plain sight.

Most people wave as we pass. Many say, “Aloha, Uncle!”

He waves back and often answers them by name.

“How—didn’t this town get pummeled by the tsunami?” I ask.

“A bit. The damage was easy enough for this group to make mo’ bettah .”

It all feels out of place and out of time. Like a modern-day place of refuge, akin to the Big Island’s ancient Hōnaunau, where vanquished warriors and kapu transgressors once found sanctuary.

“I thought people from Moloka`i hated outsiders.”

He smiles. “But they call this the Friendly Isle!”

I roll my eyes. Tell that to the surfing crowd .

Akoni gives that squeaky, bouncy laugh again. “This island never really warmed to tourists,” he agrees. “Especially our hemmed-in little shelf here. But now it’s different. We were made for this. People are beginning to get a little weary, but we’ll make it work as long as we can. Damien is patron saint of the outcast, yeah? We’re all castaways now.”

We arrive at the end of the village, where a field has been mown into a rolling lawn that houses collapsible shade structures, tents, and folding tables and chairs and cots—shanty living quarters for who knows how many families. The makeshift cityscape is ragtag, but open and airy—people are free to enter and leave—and not nearly as muddy and slovenly as the ball fields on O`ahu. It feels inviting, somehow. The strumming of a ukulele welcomes me. Potted seedlings bask in the sun. They seem hopeful. Clotheslines run from one structure to the next.

Our bags are propped against a rusted electrical box at the end of the track. The box has old graffiti painted on it. One of the words has been crossed out with new paint and replaced:

eat poi

4

brkfst

evah

“Pick out a spot,” Akoni says. “I’ll take you back to your father. No one will bother your bags.”

I wander through the camp for several minutes and come to an edge of the field that offers some elbow room. We lean the bags against a woody green bush of naupaka. I study the tiny white half-flowers blooming everywhere and think of Kai. Once we went beach camping and he annoyed me by slopping gooey marshmallow all over the sleeve of my shirt with the end of his roasting stick. So I pushed him into a naupaka bush, trapping him in the springy branches. I waited before helping him out. He then smacked me in the nose with the end of his marshmallow stick. I tossed him right back in the bush as he cackled with laughter.

I look at the naupaka’s half-flowers—only four petals on one side, looking as though the other four have been plucked. I think of the myth: Naupaka was a princess who fell in love with a commoner. The two were forbidden to marry, and during their last embrace they tore a flower in two, each taking half. One headed for the mountains while the other remained by the sea. The plant grows at high elevations and along the shores, the flowers always incomplete.