Haole Wood

The swirling turquoise close to the shore stretched out to meet the midnight blue deeper waters, looking like bright new colors of Crayola crayons melting in the sun. My ears popped again as I leaned my forehead against the airplane window. I was stunned as always at the primitive beauty of the ocean. The white frothy waves licked the Hawaiian island of Maui as the plane continued its descent. Something flickered, almost the suggestion of an outline of a person. I glanced over my shoulder, but no one was there. I guessed it was just a reflection on the window. The lush green rolling hills below skewered with palm trees promised an exotic pu pu platter of adventure—an expedition I would rather not be joining.

I hadn’t been to Maui in about fifteen years since I was a teenager visiting my Hawaiian/Korean grandmother we call Halmoni. For some reason, my dad wasn’t particularly close to his mother, so I didn’t really know her all that well. I lived in San Diego and was geographically closest to Halmoni. She was in trouble. I was it.

I did everything I could to get out of making the trip. When I got the frantic call from my parents, I turned into a total brat. “I don’t even know her. I have to work. Forget it. I’m not going.” It’s not like my mom is the boss of me. She couldn’t make me go, for Pete’s sake. I am a grown woman. I am thirty years old, and I call the shots in my life.

I trudged off the plane in Maui with only my backpack since I planned on being there for only a couple of days. Oh, how the gods of ominous music must have laughed. I headed down the stairs, out toward the taxis. The island breezes whooshed through the open air terminal at the Kahului airport and greeted me with an atmosphere as alien as if I were on another planet. I stopped and took a deep breath and remembered how different the oxygen flowed in Maui. The niggling worries I carried for the six-hour flight magically disappeared as if the wind whipping my hair cast them adrift like unwanted split-ends.

Though I knew it would cost half a day’s salary, I hailed a cab. I wiped the grumpy look off of my face, it wasn’t Maui’s fault I was on this fool’s errand. I gave my weather girl’s best smile as my arm hulaed high. Even though I didn’t really know my grandmother anymore, I hoped Halmoni was going to be all right.

“It’s outside of Lahaina, up off Lahainaluna Street,” I told the beefy Hawaiian who stopped to pick me up.

“
Mahalo
. No worries.” I got in and sank into the sticky seat. The driver shoved it into gear and peeled out in the rusty Crown Victoria, throwing me into the armrest on the passenger side door.

I settled back, letting the heavier than normal air massage my skin. I gulped in the sweet aromas through the open window and tilted my head like a dog on a joy ride. Once we passed through the commercial district right outside of the airport, we hit the open road for another thirty minutes and headed toward Lahaina, the downtown of west Maui. I could hardly keep my eyes off the ocean to the left as the highway hugged the coast. I knew living in San Diego spoiled me, but Maui felt like a different country, with the added bonus of bath water warm ocean waves.

“You said you are visiting
ohana
?” the cab driver asked. “Your family?”

I laughed as he squinted over at me. I nodded. “My grandmother.”

“She’s Hawaiian?” he asked.

Again, I nodded. Immediately, Artie, I read his name on the certificate, relaxed, flashing his big white teeth at me. Just like everywhere, prejudice was in full bloom in Hawaii.

“That’s cool you got family here. You’re so white, though. What a
haole.
”

I laughed. He didn’t offend me even though haole wasn’t the politically correct term. No one believes I have Korean and Hawaiian blood. My dad looks like a westernized version of Don Ho, but my mom is totally Scandinavian.

“What’s your name?” he asked me.

I took a deep breath. “Jaswinder.”

He took his eyes off the road to stare at me for dangerously long seconds until I pointed at the curve ahead. “I know, I know,” I said. “I work in television.”

“Respect.” He flashed a big grin at me. He didn’t need to know about the explosive drama that hit when I turned twelve. Keeping all four original, pitiful letters, I improved upon my name with both an homage to
S
now
W
hite and an oh-so-exotic heroine from a steamy romance novel I snuck read. By the time I was ready to get over it, it was too late.

“You ever live here, Jaswinder?”

“No. I grew up in Ohio. We came to visit a few times when I was younger, but my dad went to school on the mainland and pretty much never looked back.”

I remembered those long ago magical visits to my grandmother’s house. It was almost like being on
Gilligan’s Island
. In fact, that’s what my sister and I used to play. We would eat our cereal in hollowed out gourds my grandmother had at her house, head to the beach to play in the sand, and come home when the sun got too hot. In the afternoons, we would laze in the hammock out back under the kukui nut trees.

I have always been a little frightened of Halmoni who doesn’t speak English. Pretty much all I have ever been able to understand her say is: “Not that.” Halmoni has that mastered. “Not that,” she used to snap when Josephine or I would reach for the wrong herb hanging in her kitchen, our grandmother’s finger pointing in the right direction. We managed to communicate, somehow, through trial and error, raised eyebrows and ludicrous pantomimes.

We knew Halmoni loved us. I remember being about five or six years old and crying from a terrible sunburn. Halmoni coated my skin with a cooling concoction she made from kukui nut oil, all the while soothing me with some Hawaiian lullaby. The pattern of her caressing massage almost made me fall asleep as she held me on her lap, cradled in her arms, the not unpleasant smell of the oil just another ingredient in the day’s breeze. I sighed and snuggled in tighter and meant to squeeze her arm but missed and grabbed her breast.

“Not that!”

The car lurched as Artie turned right and headed away from Lahaina. I bid aloha to the little town as Artie pointed in the opposite direction and said, “
Mauka.”
I nodded. Couldn’t speak it, but could understand he meant toward the mountains.

“Up a little ways on your left, I think,” I told him, hoping I got it right. Overgrown ferns and purple-blue tropical bushes nearly hid the little driveway to my grandmother’s house. He pulled in, charged me the equivalent of a full spa manicure and pedicure, and wished me well.

“Aloha,” I repeated back to him before turning to stare at the house.

The house was much smaller and older than I remembered. The bright yellow paint from my childhood had faded to chalky beige. I hummed to myself as a breeze bounced me back and forth. I might as well make the best of things. It could be worse. It wasn’t like Halmoni lived in Siberia.

I walked up the wooden steps to the small lanai and felt under the large conch shell for the key. I let myself in. The dark wood floors gleamed. I used to love walking on them in my bare feet. I slipped off my sandals. The couch and club chairs were arranged in the exact same spots as they were on my last visit when I had been a teenager. I turned and entered my grandmother’s kitchen, which was still filled with drying herbs and growing plants.

On the phone, my mother instructed me that Halmoni wanted me to go to her house first to get some money. I shook my head and breathed in the smell that immediately conjured up a vision of my grandmother. I sniffed the earthy green aroma in her kitchen that held a hint of some spicy succulent flower.
Oh, Halmoni. What did you do?

And why do you have more than a thousand dollars crammed inside an old pee pot in the cupboard under your sink?

I started up my grandmother’s jeep and headed back into town. I hoped my plan to rescue my grandmother would work. If everything went smoothly, I would be back home in time for my shift at the television station on Wednesday without anyone really noticing I had been gone. How was I to know nothing in my life was fated to run smoothly? Oh, I don’t know, maybe a quick review of my past history?