from Startles

Startles

A big brown dog on a gurney, the other side of the window, lifts up her head, looks for her person on my side. My gaze is caught, like a vision of reddest cloth the moment after meditation. Not epiphany, which means too much, or story, meaning too little. I have been soaked in words so long, but I find none now, if words mean.

That her face was chiseled, marvelous, was not lost to me. I remarked on its beauty to the man who brought her. He’d been all the way to Waikele, where no one could see her. But this wasn’t aesthetics, not at all. Her face offered me no affect, no interpretation.

The common trigger, like a virus, is exclusion. Someone pulls it, you count it down, then the monkey enters the brain pan, scampering in its cell. The job of monkey mind, the psychologist tells me, is to make you feel alone. So there’s no monkey there, just shadows, echoes. A rope for swinging on.

You’re in the waiting room, your mind on a swing. There’s an earth mover aria on the sound system, calling out squeals and squeaks and groans. The only sense is return. The blur of it. What shutter speed could slow it down?

My husband listened to Moby Dick sped up on his kindle. It was ok, he assured me, because he could hear his own voice through the mechanical patter. A vision of Pip in a vortex comes up. A vet tech came out to lead the man toward the examination room. Lilith and I left for home.

 

The family feel

Tall, lean Jean was spidering up the hill as Lilith and I came down from the loop at the top of the cemetery, which everyone calls "the heart," but I insist is "the cul-de- sac." She'd just returned from a walking trip in Japan. "Why are all my friends going to Japan now?" I wondered. "Because it's cheap," she said. 

 

While she was away, I told her, S and J were fired, along with all the security guys. Jean retired as an x-ray technician. "When I was at Kapiolani Hospital," she said, "there was a local family feel. After the place was bought by a mainland corporation, that ended. Not the way they operate."

 

The gossip trader

 

"What, no drink of water, no bathroom break?" asked J at the front desk. "Just wanted to say hello," I responded, "and to say I miss my friends at the guard shack." She knew about S being "terminated," but nothing about Uncle J. "How is it that I sit here all day at the entrance and you know more than I do?" she asked. "Oh, I pick up gossip when I enter, drop it off at the back of the cemetery, pick up more and return it." She guessed that the boss didn't want the old loyalties any more; he's installing his own people. She was especially fond of S, who'd once called her one of the best looking people he knew. He'd been kind when she'd had surgeries a few years ago.

 

Up the hill, O and H came zooming around a corner in their John Deere vehicle (lots of them buzz around the grounds like mad golf carts). I pretended to recoil in fear. They stopped, and O fell to the ground in meditation position, right on the asphalt. Lilith came over and he formed a kind of kind arch over her, as he offered her his attention. Fur flew. "You made my day," he says. Upset with the boss. "He tell me what for do when I already know what for do; it's annoying."

 

The day after Memorial Day: acres of little American flags, paper plates, eggs, fruit cups, crackers, entire lunches, a half-peeled grapefruit. In one trash can, evidence of the new Popeyes in Kaneohe, alongside the usual McDonald's brown bags and napkins. A large Coca Cola cup, with plastic straw and loud flag motif, sat on the grass.

The [word] is not love

 

I called him on it. "[Word] Paul," O called the mortician. "Did you actually use that word?" I asked, wondering at Paul's reaction. "Oh he was ok with it. I use [the word] with my [Hawaiian word] friends on the mainland; you're my [word]," he added. They call me the [word] too. "I'd never use that word," I told him. "The word wouldn't hurt kids growing up now," H added. As if. 

 

"Well, it's just a word," said O.

Lilith encounters a reader and a poet

On our way to the bus stop to meet the poet from Cebu and St. Louis, Lilith and I ran into the man who reads my books. We'd met in the cemetery a while back, so I told him the cemetery is going to hell, what with downed trees and fired staff. "I believe in enjoying the moment," he replied. "I hope things work out in the end." They'd found a mass in his kidney, said he could live with one only. So he's enjoying his life, still has both kidneys.

 

The poet from Cebu and St. Louis got off the bus and crossed Hui Iwa Street. I introduced him to the man who reads my books, who asked if the poet is in them. "Not yet," the poet said. Lilith had greeted the poet as if he knew her, and was happy to receive the other man's blessings, as well.

 

After dinner, the poet from Cebu and St. Louis looked at my books on the shelf, made from Philippine mahogany by my husband. He pulled one out whose font he liked. "It looks lighter than the others," he said. "Well, except for the pieces about gun violence," I responded.

 

In Portland once, a poet introduced me as the woman who "goes into the DARKNESS." Oh tell me, where is the light?

How many walks fit on the head of a pin?

 

"How am I going to pull all of this together?" I asked Rachelle, on a day of many Lilith walks at once. "You'll think of something."

 

She and Aldon (who runs the Waikane Store on Kam Highway with his mother) had caught up with us at the front gate, said they were going to join us on our walk. Aldon did a fist bump with Uncle J's brother at the shack; said he missed their father, a prominent preacher. Aldon did lots of fist bumps on our walk; he knew Ola's grandpa, the bus driver. We all knew Paul the mortician, who suggested that I go to their meeting this evening (they're all Jehovah's Witnesses) to find out about the prophecy (change of leadership is coming, not meaning just Trump, but even perhaps human leadership). He muttered about the backstories to S and J getting fired, but would say no more. 

 

As we walked up hill, Aldon talked about languages (he's learning Hebrew), including the politics of pronunciation, quoted a Biblical verse, recommended movies, marveled at Lilith's high energy. Said he loves the Bible, detective stories and gangsters. He and R lamented the spate of accidents on Kam Highway the past few days. Attempted murder last night at the Hygienic Store. Their mental health outreach, the strange things people yell at them when they're handing out JW materials. "One guy yelled BLACK SUNDAY in my ear," Aldon said. "What's that mean?" He didn't have a clue. He tries not to argue back.

Post-termination walk in the cemetery

"I gather things have changed," I said to R at the guard shack this morning. He laughed awkwardly. The shack is being renovated; apparently they're going to add a walk-in closet. "For skeletons?" I asked. New windows, raw 2x4's, another guy seated on an office chair in the middle of it all. Up the hill, I approached Uncle J's brother, still seated in a chair beside the temple parking lot, the better to move cones when large buses pull up. He's a man of few words.. "It's not us," he said. "It's management. And look at this zoo." 

 

I gave Hoku the aloha shirt I'd promised him. He sports "formal wear" on Fridays (it's a work tradition), even as he spends hours weed whacking. I congratulated them on still having jobs. Lilith leapt toward Ola for her attention, then back to Hoku. Well, there were stories. S had overlooked some thefts by three guys (also left go). And Uncle J had been caught on camera giving flowers away. I chalked some of this up to anger at management. 

 

"Such a sweet crime," a friend says on the phone, "taking flowers."