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Pakalaki Memories: 2

Kirby Wright


If Gramma did travel to Oahu, she preferred to stay with my father‘s half-brother Tommy in Kaneohe rather than with us in Kahala. My big brother Ben and I were partly to blame. We'd bolt the front door whenever guests were expected and kept it bolted until they slipped dollar bills or coins under the door. On Gramma's first visit, we watched from behind the louvers as my father‘s Olds pulled into the driveway. Gramma got out and made her way to the door.

"Wha'd yah bring me," we asked her, "wha'd yah bring me?"

Gramma tested the knob. "Open the bloody doah."

"Wha'd yah bring me?"

"A big stick."

Ben and I always exhausted Gramma's patience during our summers spent with her on Moloka'i. If we tried anything funny during her visits to Honolulu, she'd pull a bamboo stick out of her suitcase and whack us. My mother gave her the maid's room, a room with a bath on the street side of the house. Gramma hated the maid's room because it overlooked the sidewalk. She said sidewalks gave puhi'us an excuse to peek in while she was changing. And she didn't like the idea of "complete strangas" whizzing by in cars. Gramma told me our house was built kapakahi because only one door faced north and none faced south … that meant ghosts marching down from the mountains at night to go fishing could enter but couldn't get out. She said she heard spirits searching the cupboards for food after midnight.

"Bet it was my father," I told her.

She shook her head. "I know what yoah fathah sounds like."

"Maybe it was my mother."

"Christ," she said, "that big horse sleeps like a log."

 


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