Clairboyance: Chapters 1–5

“GIVE ME BACK MY ‘UKULELE.”
The voice of Pua, the new girl, rises above the usual bus chatter.

She’s the queen of the code switch, moving between English and pidgin with ease. It’s not just Hawaiian Creole she speaks either; she’s already taking the advanced ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i class at school.

Now Leo strums a chorus before crooning: “Country road, take me home, to the place I belong.”

Later, when my friendship with Leo fell apart, Dad told me I had to keep flying into the wind. Stay strong in the face of a storm. All that.
Mom has a different set of flying metaphors. She tells me there comes a time to spread your wings. That, when I’m old enough, I can fly away to a new place, a new life. A new me.
I like Mom’s metaphor better.

For three years — from third through fifth grade — Leo and I were inseparable.

...I want to tell her about what kind of friends Leo and I used to be. The true kind. Through my mom’s third deployment and his dad’s cancer. Through his dad’s passing and my dad’s decision to move to Arizona for work. It felt like Leo and I weathered everything together, and I was sure we would always be there for each other.

Here the breeze rolls up from the ocean, and the ‘auwai — the ditch that siphons water from the mountain stream — keeps the land lush and cool.

For Hawaiians, lo‘i are special because we believe that Hāloa, the first taro, is our older sibling. So when we tend our kalo, we’re also caring for our family. It’s not farming as much as cultivating relationships with our ancestors, our environment, and one another.

When I was little, Papa used to tell me that instead of a green thumb, Tūtū had a green ear. She could hear what plants needed to grow. This was how she came to run a nursery dedicated to growing native plants and finding habitats for them.

When Dad was a kid, he used to go up there with Tūtū all the time to clear invasive vines and bushes.

But the truth is, I’m not great with diagrams and maps...Dad says it’s ironic because I’m so good at drawing...

He said he was building a nest egg for us, but I know at least part of him wanted to see where things went with Steph.

There are a lot of different kinds of ‘umeke. They can be made from gourds or wood.

“‘Umeke, what are boys thinking?” I ask...” I caress the smooth wood and wait for something to happen.
But of course, nothing does.

“Does that mean we’re descended from the boy thief ‘Iwa?”
“I like for think so. I never know for sure, but my Tūtū wahine, she never teach me or my brother ‘ōlelo. She never teach us our mo‘okū‘auhau, so we never learn how for say our genealogy. Not her fault. My kūpuna, they were afraid we get in trouble in school or be kept from opportunities. That’s how it was back then. Plus, my tūtū kāne died young. These are the ways knowledge gets lost. Get hard to regain...."