Where you went?" asked Judy, up the hill; she was talking to a woman with tattoos on her arms who stood next to a dusky red SUV. "It's Lilith. She's in a book," Judy told her friend, who asked me if Lilith is a "Hawaiian dog." I said I'd looked that dog up once and yes, it resembles Lilith, except Lily is part-chihuahua. The woman's name is Lil, and I say that Susan comes from the Hebrew for Lily, so there we are, talking in front of Judy's house, whose garden is chaotic in an organized way, or organized in a chaotic one. The Hawaiian dog had simply appeared at Lil's house and stayed eight years. Disappeared. A visitation.
Judy says her brother-in-law died. It's been a hard year. Her sister, her best friend; they talked every day. Her friend was allergic to antibiotics, which they gave her in the ER. They'd also pushed aspirin on her, even though she said she was allergic, but this time she couldn't tell them.
And then there's Maui. Her stepdaughter lived right there on Front Street. Is ok, but. Nothing left. We try to talk about why such a thing might have happened, but don't get very far, or how things might get better again. She says if she lived there she might sell her land and get out. She'd have nothing anyway. Time is all mixed up. You don't know what will happen.
I tell her that my mother, when she still lived at home but had dementia, walked to a neighbor's house at 2 a.m. and said she was worried that the sun hadn't come up that day. She thought it was 10. Oh, dementia, said Judy. She went with her grown kids to visit her ex-husband over near Waikele. He came down the stairs smiling. She greeted him with "anyway, den!," but he didn't remember anyone, anything.
I lean over (that's how small she is) and give Judy a hug. "Who knows if we'll be able to hug each other tomorrow," she says, as Lilith goes to her for attention, and we pull away. The street smells strangely of pakalolo, then down the hill of dinners being made.
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